Imprisoned in the pack ice, Endurance drifts.
All hands are formally ‘put off’ ship’s routine.
The sailors in their quarters in the fo'c’sle have little to do. For Worsley, his ship becomes in effect a shore station,
“… strange to hear & feel a fresh gale … & to feel absolutely no motion or even vibration in the ship. She is held rigid as a rock.”
For those keyed up to leave the ship and start their work ashore - keen disappointment.
Full polar clothing intended for the landing party is shared out amongst the whole ship’s company. Carpenter Harry McNish uses the timber intended for the shore hut to build cubicles in the ‘tween decks for winter quarters. The dogs transferred to specially built ’dogloos’ on the ice begin training in sledge teams.
The scientists create work programmes.
Hurley fits up the ship’s refrigerator in the hold as a dark room.
“… developing his cinema films for which he requires the paraffin heater to keep the water & his dark room above freezing point, & 40 gallons of water each day for his films”
Routine for the men is essential, as is keeping busy.
‘Told off if late for meals by 2 mins”
Worsley
For Shackleton, visible optimism is key. At the same time, he exercises strict control over all movement away from the ship. McNish recounts:
“… no outside work only arguments about the war”
Winter and darkness close in.
“3 May … the last day on which we could have looked for the sun, but it never appeared”
Crammed inside a wooden shell trapped in a vast ocean of ice, the 28 men are utterly alone. Out of all contact. No one will ever know they are here.
‘The Scientists washing down the Ritz.” Living quarters in the hold with James Wordie, Alfred Cheetham and Alexander Macklin (left to right). Glass plate negative, S0000161
A glimpse in the fo'c'stle. The seamen together © Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, with permission
‘Hurley and Hussey engaged in a friendly tournament’. Glass plate negative, S0000169
“Scientists now start to prepare their own special work … Imprisonment in the ice pack is very hard on the geologist.”
Worsley
Image credit: ‘Hussey and James taking observations’. Glass plate negative, S0000164
‘Hurley and Macklin at home’. In the Billabong; the only double cubicle, shared with Hussey and McIlroy. Celluloid negative, S0000142
“Blackboro bringing in the daily supply of water”
Rickinson
Image credit: ‘Winter afternoon in the Ritz’. Life improves greatly in the Ritz after Hurley, technically resourceful, fixes up an electric light plant. Glass plate negative, S0000841
“13 March … Clark works dragnet … & obtains a good haul of plankton …”
Worsley
Image credit: ‘Clark the Biologist’. Glass plate negative, S0011641
‘Mid-winter Dinner’. Glass plate negative, S0000160
22 June 1915 – the day the sun begins to return –
“treated as Christmas Day … the special feast of duck and green peas, fresh - out of the tin”.
Rickinson
“After … the end of the room was converted into a stage … the footlights were of acetylene, 5 burners with biscuit tin lids for reflectors … everybody did something …. Most of the performers were in costume.”
James
Fo’c’sle members had their own celebration.
“All hands are on all day & sleep all night except for the Night Watch who looks after the dogs & ship & keeps his eyes skinned for any sign of a possible crack in the ice … from 8PM to 8AM …”
Worsley
“The charges of flash powder were placed in three shielded receptacles and fired electrically. The dogs were extremely scared …”
Hurley describes photographing the dogs at night.
Inside the ship is security.
Outside - the ice.
Unpredictable.
Dangerous.
In winter’s dark, Endurance drifts north. Signs of distant trouble come nearer – ice heaving up, slow masses rolling over each other. The wind howls in the rigging.
Endurance experiences her first attack. Things quieten. But pressure increases, menacing in the darkness and cold of winter.
1 August 1915:
“… the floe surrounding us started breaking up … pressure … forcing large masses of ice underneath us … all hands … warned to stand by, get all the sleep they can & have their warmest clothes in readiness to ‘get out and walk’ …
A year ago … this day and hour … we unmoored in the S.W. India Docks & started South.”
Worsley
Hurley’s images capture specific moments in time, yet distill the inherent isolation of the beset ship.
“During night take flashlight of ship beset by pressure. This necessitated some 20 flashes, one behind each salient pressure hummock no less than 10 of the flashes being required to satisfactorily illuminate the ship herself.
Half blinded … I lost my bearings … bumping shins … & stumbling into deep snow drifts …
1.30 a.m. All hands aroused by crack starting from under mizzen chains to starboard stern. Sledges taken on board …”
Hurley
The Returning Sun
The returning sun brings clear August days.
Hurley ranges away from the ship with his dog sledge, capturing the clarity of light, the tones and textures of white, the chaos of ice in frozen motion. Superb evocations of the beset ship on her maiden voyage, ice-glittering; a ‘Bride of the Sea’ chance-placed in vast, careless spaces.
Endurance travels steadily north. In late spring or early summer perhaps she might break free of the pack. The ice might open allowing them to escape.
But always the sounds of the ice creaking, groaning, squealing, roaring: reminders of threat.
“Marston … has now got a fine collection of studies of the pack - its ever varying aspects of sun & moonlit nights & blizzard days - smooth open fields & battered floes fenced in with chaotic pressure ridges.”
Worsley
Image credit: Endurance beset. Oil painting by George Marston, official expedition artist. Reproduced by kind permission, Private Collection
‘A pressure ridge in formation’. Glass plate negative, S0026094
16 August.
“No land in sight … a rattling good game of hockey chased the last lingering blue devils away … The pack … in a state of chaos … heavy pressure ridges in all directions.”
Worsley
Image credit: Endurance frozen in the ice. Glass plate negative, S0011666
‘Dawn After Winter’. Pressure near ship. Blocks newly rafted up. Glass plate negative, S0011644
“30 August
Develop plates accumulated. Darkroom work rendered extremely difficult by the low temperatures it being -13 outside … the darkroom situated abaft the Engine room is raised to above freezing point by a primus stove.
A large bulk of Hypo is made into a solution & raised to 70°. The dishes must be warmed with the developer which is kept reasonably constant by additions from a warm source.
Washing plates is troublesome as the tank must be kept warm or the plates become an enclosure in an ice block. After several changes I place them in a rack in Sir E’s cabin - which is generally at an equable temperature. The dry plates are all spotted & carefully indexed.
Development is a source of much annoyance to the fingers which split and crack around the nails in a painful manner.”
Hurley
Cracks in the Ice
Endurance is squeezed but recovers. Bursts of pressure are followed by quiet. The floe is holding Endurance intact, but becoming increasingly unstable. As suddenly the pressure stops.
The last day of the month the floe cracks open.
“At lunch we could do nothing but talk about the … chances of the ship being free …”
Wordie
Then, with no warning -
“the worst nip we have had … the decks shudder & jump … every moment it seems as tho the floe must crush her like a nutshell.”
Worsley
“… at tea we were once more … back to the chance of the ship being crushed.”
Wordie
Early October the Ritz is dismantled. Everyone moves back to their summer cabins.
“Great cleaning up Hammering, sawing - cheers, Song etc.”
Worsley
15 October. “a slight bump” - and Endurance breaks free from the ice. She’s afloat. Then the lead
“closes & holds us fast again”.
Wordie
The 'Endurance' Keels Over
17 October, pressure starts.
“In the engine room - the weakest part of the ship - loud noises - crashes & hammerings … the iron plates on the floor buckle up & over ride …”
18 October.
“at 4.45 p.m. the floes come together … forcing her out of the ice … heeling the ship over … with a list of 30 degrees”
Hurley
23 October 1915. Pressure begins, again focusing on the vulnerable engine room. Endurance springs a leak. Fighting to the end to save their ship, they are forced, late on Wednesday 27 October to abandon the irretrievably damaged Endurance.
“The deck seemed to slide away … I was … carried down into a heap of dogs …
about 8 p.m. … she came up right again just as rapidly as she had heeled over.
10 p.m. All hands … called to grog … the boiler … filled and fire lighted … ready to steam away if any opportunity offered.”
20 October.
“... have again gone into sea watches … I’ll be blowed if I want to see any more ice as long as I live!”
James
The destruction of the Endurance captured on film by Frank Hurley © British Film Institute
“Awful calamity overtaking the ship” Hurley
“The ice drove the engine through the galley. The galley through the wardroom. A sickening sensation to feel the decks breaking up, the great beams bending & then snapping with a noise like heavy gunfire. The cabins splintered … Relentless destruction …”
Shackleton
Ejected on to the ice, a night of tension and anxiety follows. Bitterly cold, the floes cracking, forced three times to move their tents.
“morning came in chill & cheerless … Hurley rigged his kinematograph getting pictures of Endurance in her death throes.”
Shackleton
Ocean Camp
“We are homeless & adrift on the sea ice” Hurley
Stripping to bare essentials Shackleton attempts to lead his men over the pack ice to the nearest land 200 miles west. His declared aim: to get everyone safely home.
On 1 November, defeated, they scavenge what they can from the dangerous wreck and set up ‘Ocean Camp’ on a thick old floe.
2 November.
“... try & save negatives & bared from head to waist probed … the mushy ice. The cases … containing the negatives in soldered tins I located … & practically all were intact.”
9 November.
“… selected the pick of my negatives about 150 & owing to the necessary drastic reduction in weight had to break & dump about 400.”
Hurley
‘On the drifting flow ‘Ocean’ Camp’. Shackleton standing by his tent shoulder to shoulder with his second in command Wild. Behind: each man stands alone. Scientists and officers in mid ground. Crew at the back. Glass plate negative, S0000840
November 1915. The King’s flag flying from the look-out platform. Hurley, Wild and Shackleton standing. Hurley’s remaining equipment and images stacked outside Shackleton’s tent ready to move at a moment’s notice. Glass plate negative, S0000165
21 November 1915, 5pm, Endurance finally sinks below the ice.
Hurley’s images of Ocean Camp drifting slowly north, a small dark smudge in a colossal world of floating ice, evoke isolation, distance, the smallness and vulnerability of men held in the grip of forces over which they can have no control.
Life of the Expedition on the Drifting Sea Ice is the fourth part of a series of online exhibitions drawing on content from the Society’s exhibition Shackleton’s Legacy and the Power of Early Antarctic Photography, displayed in the Society’s Pavilion from 7 February to 4 May 2022.
Exhibition guest curated by Meredith Hooper, with supporting contributions from Alasdair MacLeod and Jools Cole. Digital exhibition created by Hania Sosnowska.
About the curator
Meredith Hooper is a lecturer, historian, Antarctic expert and full time writer of non-fiction and fiction for children and adults.
She grew up in Australia and after graduating in history from the University of Adelaide, she came to the UK to do a postgraduate history degree at Oxford.
Meredith was selected by the Australian Antarctic Division to visit Antarctica as a writer in 1994 and was also selected by the US National Science Foundation to visit Antarctica as a writer in 1998-1999 and 2001-2002, on their Antarctica Artists Writers Program. As well as being shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, her work has appeared on TES Information Book and Australian Children’s Book of the Year shortlists.
Meredith researched, wrote and curated the exhibition The enduring eye: the Antarctic legacy of Sir Ernest Shackleton and Frank Hurley from original source material in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, whilst also drawing on information provided by descendants of some of the 28 men on the expedition. The original exhibition, now incorporated within Shackleton’s legacy, toured the UK from 2015-2018 and was also shown at the Bowers Museum, California, from 2017- 2018.
A selection of the Society's images featured in this online exhibition can be purchased from the RGS Print Store.
For more information on how to access and use the Society's Collections please visit our website.
Text © Meredith Hooper
Images © Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) unless stated otherwise
Credits and acknowledgements
The Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) would like to thank the following organisations and individuals:
Exhibition curators: Meredith Hooper and Dr Jan Piggott
Physical exhibition designers: Sarner International Limited
Sponsored by:
The Shackleton Company | The James Caird Society | The Folio Society | South Georgia Association | Devon and Cornwall Polar Society
Supported by:
The United Kingdom Antarctic Heritage Trust | Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 | British Antarctic Territory | Government of South Georgia & the South Sandwich Islands | Rolex (for its support for the Society's Picture Library and contribution towards conservation of its Collections) | The National Heritage Lottery Fund
The Hon. Alexandra Shackleton, FRGS | Mr Jan Chojecki | Dr Jan Faull | Mr John James | The late Mr Henry Worsley, FRGS
Associated Newspapers Limited | Bridgeman Images | British Antarctic Survey | The British Film Institute | The British Library | Buenos Aires Herald | Christie’s | The Daily Mirror | Dulwich College | Illustrated London News/Mary Evans | Museum of London | The Royal Albert Hall | Scott Polar Research Institute | State Library, New South Wales, Australia | State Library, Victoria, Australia | Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand | USGS, NASA, National Science Foundation