Ad Infernum: The Edge of Civilization

    To talk about the bottom of the universe

the way it truly is, is no child's play,

no task for tongues that gurgle baby-talk. ...

...In the depths of Austria's wintertime, the Danube 

never in all its course showed ice so thick, 

nor did the Don beneath its frigid sky,

as this crust here; for if Mount Tambernic

or Pietrapana would crash down upon it,

not even at its edges would a crack creak.

~Dante, The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Canto XXXII

 As mentioned previously, Shackleton had volunteered all the men and supplies of his Trans-Antarctic Expedition, without consulting his donors, to the war effort as soon as Britain declared war on Germany. He was thanked but told they were not needed since the war would likely be over in a few months. So Endurance set sail from Plymouth on August 8, 1914 heading for Buenos Aires. Shackleton had been detained by expedition business, so he did not depart on the ship. He took a faster ship to Buenos Aires and met with the rest of the crew there.I do not know what day Endurance reached Buenos Aires, Shackleton does not mention it in any of his published writings. Perhaps, because he arrived separately, no one bothered to mark it. The voyage from Plymouth to Argentina would probably take about two months.  They departed Buenos Aires on October 26 and came to Grytviken, the whaling station at South Georgia, on November 5.     South Georgia is the largest and northernmost of a chain of islands known as South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.  It was then and still is a British Overseas Territory. Britain had claimed South Georgia since 1775 but had only taken over the South Sandwich Islands in 1908, six years prior.  Back in 1914 they were known as the Falkland Islands Dependencies. Grytviken was the main settlement there, a whaling station (where whales were brought for processing after being killed by whaling ships) and literally the end of civilization. Past Grytviken there was nothing, no towns, no radio, no telegraphs, no people. Today there are a few research stations in Antarctica so one is never very far from at least other humans, but Shackleton and Company were completely on their own.   The whalers at Grytviken had warned Shackleton about ice around the South Sandwich group, they had seen ice come all the way up to the island chain even in summer (which it was now), and said the best time to get into the Weddell Sea was probably late February or early March.  The Weddell Sea is the large bay facing the South America side of Antarctica. (I would say the North/West/or East side, but at the bottom of the world, there is really only one direction to go, North.

South Georgia, taken by Frank Hurley

    The ship departed Grytviken on December 5, 1914. They had hoped a steamer would arrive at the station to bring mail and news of the war before they had left, but they tarried long enough and had to leave while the ice pack was at least barely passable. A year and a half later they would learn that the steamer Harpoon had arrived with mail just two hours after Endurance departed. Passing through the South Sandwich islands on the 7th of December, they met their first ice at 57°26’ south latitude. Many icebergs, tabular in shape and yellow with diatoms, were seen west of the islands.  Two hours later, the ship encountered its first band of heavy pack ice. Although the whalers had said ice came as far north as the southern end of the islands, Shackleton was had not expected to see it this soon.
    Why was there ice this far north? Even today, when Antarctica is supposedly warmer, pack ice comes as far north as the Southern Sandwich Islands in winter.  Also, 1914 was a mere 64 years after the approximate end of the Little Ice Age, and the climate was still coming out of that. Only two years prior had benen the great maritime tragedy when Titanic struck a berg in the opposing hemisphere in a place were ice is now less common.  Titanic herself was only a few miles from pack ice in the north Atlantic when she struck the berg that was her undoing. Indeed, there is a theory that the Great Ship did not hit an iceberg but pack ice.  If pack ice was that far south in 1912, then it is no surprise that it was that far north of the South Pole in late spring two years later.
  Thus began the process that would become routine most of the way south.  Sail or steam through leads in the ice as they found them, break through the ice when there were no leads, or when the wind was driving the ice floes so close together they were impassible, shut off the engine and wait.  During colder weather, water that was exposed between floes would soon freeze over in a matter of hours after putting off "frost smoke". Often, they would have to break through the ice by driving the ship against a floe at half speed, stopping the engines just before impact. The ship would then ram into the ice and cut a V-shape into the floe, and often the impact caused the ship's bow to rise nearly out of the water and roll slightly. After ensuring loose bits of ice would not hit the propeller, they then reversed the engines and drove the ship back 200 to 300 yards. They would then drive the ship forward and hit the V in the center. This would be repeated until, usually on the fourth attempt, the ice split and they could sail through. Sailing through these ice floes required muscle as well as nerves. One day, while navigating and breaking through the ice, there was a great nose aft. Leonard Hussey, meteorologist, was at the wheel and explained "The wheel spun round and threw me over the top if it!" This was no pleasure cruise.
       It wasn't all monotonous ice-splitting, though. There were sled dogs to train and give names to like Rugby, Upton, Saint, Caruso, and Slobbers. Shackleton and Company did a good deal of whale, penguin and seal spotting, as often as not they would hunt the animals as well. This was not so much for sport as to add to their food supply. Then of course there was fun to be had at the scientists' expense. One of the standing jokes on the ship was that the Adelie Penguins they saw quite often all knew biologist Robert Clark, and when he was at the wheel would run alongside the ship squawking "Clark! Clark!" and seemed to be disappointed that he never answered. Some of the men would later put a few strands of spaghetti in a jar and present it to Clark as some new Antarctic worm they had found.  At one point while trying to run through some ice, the captain had the semaphore hard-a-port, but the ship would not port. The captain shouted to the scientist who happened to be manning the wheel "Why in Paradise don't you Port!" The indignant reply came "I am blowing my nose!" Ah, scientists. Even they were required to steer the ship through the ice floes.
    The penguins, in addition to acquainting themselves with Clark, also seemed to have a taste for music. One afternoon, Hussey was playing the banjo on deck and three Adelie penguins approached the ship. They apparently very much appreciated "It's a Long Way to Tipperary" but, according to Shackleton, "they fled in horror when Hussey treated them to a little of the music that comes from Scotland." The roars of laughter from the crew dismayed the little birds even more, and they ran off as fast as their short legs would go.
      Christmas Day 1914 found Endurance stuck in heavy ice floes from midnight to 6:00 a.m. then the ice opened and they made progress until about 11:30 a.m., when the ice closed in again. During the early part of the night, they had good leads and easily broken ice.  They made more progress that day then the had and of the prior two weeks.   On the other side of the world, Germans and British soldiers on the front lines were calling a temporary truce for Christmas.  They would get back to killing each other the next day. Meanwhile,  the crew of the Endurance had grog at midnight for all on deck, and grog again breakfast for those who had been asleep at midnight. Thomas Orde-Lees, the storekeeper and motor expert, had decorated the wardroom with flags and had a little present for each of them. Later came a dinner of turtle soup, whitebait, jugged hare, Christmas pudding, mince pies, dates, figs, and crystallized fruit, with rum and stout.
  New Year's Day, 1915 came, and since the ship had entered pack ice in December, they had made 480 miles through the ice. Shackleton reckoned the total steaming distance to be 700 miles. So 220 miles had been spent sailing along and around ice finding a way through to open water. They had made good progress considering the ice and the winds that had barred their crossing. But winter was quickly on it's way, and they were still not within sight of land.
 

Colorized photograph of Endurance in full sail