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NARRATOR: They were ale,
aters
An
"Frozen," as one man put it,
"like almonin the middle of a chocolate bar."
The year was 1915,
and the Imperial Transarctic Expedition had ground to a halt.
to save their ship from the onslaught of the ice.
The ouide world had no idea of their predicament,
as they drifted helplessly towards uncharted waters.
With civilization over 1,000 miles away,
only static crackling could be heard
rough their radio headset.
Confronted with the approach of the Aarctic winter
and the coldest imate on Earth,
they were about to be pushed to the limits of human endurance.
MAN: My father never
to any of us, his children, ever discussed
the Endurance expedition.
Occasionally an odd statement ce out,
buhe was extraordinarily reticent.
He never let us read his diaries when he was alive.
They were locked u
MAN: In some ways, it was almost as if the situati never happened.
And that's probably because my father always felt
that without having been there, without having experienced,
without having suffered and endured,
that it would be very difficult
for anybody outside that to understand.
WOMAN: My father didn't speak too much about the Antarctic.
I often nder, "Was it too hard?
Did he want to forget it?"
But he did say they had a tough time.
And the one thing he did show us, now, was his ears.
They had suffered frostbite; they were like brds.
NARRATOR: One man above all
bore responsibity for their survival,
Sir Ernest Shackleton.
A veteran of polar exploration,
he knew that anyone trapped in this hoile region
would be stalked by starvation, insanity and death
For Shackleton, the stark reality of their plight
was rrifyingly clear:
With no chancef rescue,
it was up to him to get his men out alive.
Their struggle would become legend,
a stament to the human spirit,
and an epic venture of a heroic age.
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STIERS: In 1913, an Anglo-Irish explorer named Sir Ernest Shackleton
set anmbitious goal:
SHACKLETON ( dramatized ): ter the conquest of the South Pole,
there remained but one great object,
the first crossing of the Antarctic continent
The distance will be roughly 1,800 miles.
Half will be over unknown ground.
Every step will advance geographic science.
It will be the greatest polar journey ever atmpted.
MAN: Shackleton was an inordinately ambitis man.
He was searching for greatness, for reputation.
And it just so happened that polar exploration
offered him the opportunity.
MAN: He had a huge amount of energy, he wasull of enterprise,
he was very good-natured.
And anybody who ever met him
saw that this was someone who was going to get on with people
and he was going to get on wh what he wanted to do in life.
STIERS: Shacklet left boarding school at a 16
and joined the navy sail around the world.
But he was soon drawn to the glory of exploratn
as he accompanied Robert Scott
on his attempt to reach the south pole in 1902.
Like beasts of bden, they man-hauled supplies,
but failed to bring enough
to ward off cold,
Over 400 miles from the pole, they were forced to give up.
At 28, Shackletos ravaged face betrayed
the suffering he had endured.
ott dismissed him as "our invad,"
and sent him home to England.
It was a devastating indictment,
but not one shared by the public,
which idolized these men as heroes.
Six years later,
Shackleton launched his own assault on the pole
with Siberian ponies.
Only 97 miles fromhe prize,
he made the agonizing decision to turn back
rather than risk e lives of h men.
While praising Shackleton
for lifting the veil from Antarctica,
Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundson noted:
AMUNDSON ( dramatized ): If Shackleton had been equipped in dogs and, above all, skis,
and understood their use,
well, then, the south pole would have been a closed chapter.
STIERS: Two yearlater, Amundson claimed the le for Norway.
Undaunted, Shackleton plied his ambition
.
Shackleton was the most charng, persistent beggar
you have ever met.
And head a wonderful way
of being able to get money for hiexpeditions.
His outgoing, open approach to things disarmed people.
I'm not saying disarmed them theironey,
but people took an instant liking to him.
STIERS: Born into the middle class,
Shackleton's marriage to the affluent Emily Dorman,
helped him court patrons.
With gifts and loans, he purched a ship
and christened her the Enrance,
after his family motto, "By durance we conquer."
As war threatened Europe,
Shackleton offered his ship and service to the British Navy,
which declined,
convinced the fighting would be over in months.
Left alone to raise eir three children, Emily wre:
EMILY ( dramatized ): I think fairy tales are to be blamed
for half the misery in the world.
I never let my children read
"and they were married and lived happily ever after."
NARRATOR: On t eve oWorld War I
the Endurae departed for Antarcti.
On board were 69 excited sled dogs
and a 28-man crew
ists.
For Shackleton, personity ttered more
than a man's expernce with ice and snow.
met Ernest Sckleton
by replying to an advertisement
that was in the personal columns of the Times, that read:
And such an advertisement would have been absolute catnip
to my grandfather, Colonel Orde-Lees;
he couldn't resist it.
MAN: My grandfather, Chippy McNeish,
saw an advertisement in the paper,
and it said you might not return.
( chuckling )
So he went and seen about it and got it.
STIERS: Around,000 men applied.
Shackleton's sheer willpower and personal magnetism
der.
HUNTFORD: This has got to do
with some force of character,
some flame that burns within a man.
You can't learn it, you n't develop it;
it's something you radiate.
He had this.
STIERS: From England, the Endurance crossed the Atlantic
to Buenos Aires, then headed towards Antarctica.
Within days, shentered the notoriously stormy waters
of the Southern Ocean.
Expedition photographer Frank Hurley,
who had previoly filmed in the region,
described the Endurance's paage through the wis
known as the "Roaring Forties."
HURLEY ( dramatized ): For we
He has flung mnificent power at our starboard quarter,
but beyond an occasional monster
leaping aboard to flood our decks,
we have ambled buoyantly south, flung from side to side.
STIERS: On November 5, the towerg ranges of South Gegia,
a sub-Antarctic island, came into view.
The Endurance dropped anchor in Grytviken,
a dingy whaling station
surrounded by snow-capped mountains.
It washe peak of the whaling season,
and 300 men worked the station
stripping ubber off the carcasses.
MAN: When Shackleton arrived at Grytviken,
whale catchers were coming in with their catches,
and they're saying there's a lot of ice around.
And this appeared to them to be a reasonable bad year for ice.
This was a bit of a warning to him.
And they were prepared to wait a little bit
for the ice to open up.
y
as the men roamed the island,
scovering its magnificent wildlife and scenery.
( barking )
Frank Hurley enlisted lp
to haul equipment
to photograph the Endurance at harbor.
He was, according tone man, a warrior with his camera,
who'd do anything to get a picture.
Shackleton spent time with local whalers,
learning about Antarctica's ice-ridden Wdell Sea
infamo f crushing ships.
By the end of December, he hed to reach Vahsel Bay,
a landing pot that gave him
the shortest route across Antarctica.
From here, he would sledge inland
with five men and dog teams,
in a desperate race to reach the other side
before the polar winter arrived.
MAN: If you want try and cross the whole the inld plateau,
which is bigger than China,
you only have a very short period of me
when human beings can travel-- between November and March--
to get from A to B if you're going to survive.
you'd almo certainly be killed by the cold.
STIERS: With the southern summer warming South Gegia,
and war engulfing Europe,
Shackleton gw desperate
He could only pray t ice would not impede them.
I have here a letter which my father wrote to hisather,
dated from South Georgia on theecond of December, 1914.
It says, "Dear old Dad, just a line before we il.
"This is the last port fore the South.
"We have had a very good time so far,
"and I tnk we shall do well.
"I hope to be home again within 19 months
"and, if I can manage it, to go straight to the front.
What a glorious age we live in."
STIERS: As South Georgia disappeared,
Alexander Macklin, the ship's doctor, observed:
MACKLIN ( dramatized ): We had now cut ourselves adrift from civilization
and were making our way off the map.
We met several large bergs drifting majestically north,
anin contrast to their ablute whiteness,
the sea had a dark, black look.
STIERS: But Shackleton watched withlarm.
As they encountered stream ice, he ordered the sails taken in
and proceeded cautiously, under steam.
Checking the noon latitude,
he was shocked to find ice so far north,
and knew it meant delays.
Orde-Lees, a captain in the military, described their enemy:
ORDE-LEES ( dramatized ): This, then, is the pack, a sight worth coming so far to see.
And even as I write,
the book is constantly being *** from under my pen
as the ship takes the shock of charging each slab,
and we go along, scrunch, scrunch, through the pack.
crash )
CARR: To go through those large blocks of ice
in a wooden ship is a pretty horrendous experience.
It feels as if the boat is being hammered by heavobjects.
And the noise is severe.
You think the boat is really ing punished.
ng one
and what was just the normal one
beuse a lot of ships who behave wrongly
in that sort of pack ice go down terribly quickly.
IERS: To battle the ice, the Endurance was sheathed in greenheart,
one of the toughest woods available.
( dull crash )
Shackleton tried to avoid direct hits,
scanning the horizon for patches of open water.
He shouted orders to the captain, Frank Worsley,
who in turn directed the man at the wheel.
In contrast to Shackleton's caution, Macklin noticed:
MACKLIN: Worsley specialized in ramming, and I have a sneaking suspicion
that he often went out of his way to find a nice piece of floe
at which he could drive at full speed and cut in two.
He loved to feel the shock, the riding up,
and the sensations as the ice gave, and we drove through.
STIERS: For weeks, the Endurance fought h way
thugh the ice-locked sea,
consuming her prious supply of coal.
Finally, Orde-Le observed:
ORDE-LEES: Dame Fortune, Sir Ernest's old and constant friend,
a
and we passed through.
STIERS: On New Year's Eve,
Frank Hurley's diary reflected the hopefulness
at had settled over the ship.
HURLEY: About midnig, we crossed the Antarctic Circle,
with a glorious sunset reflecting in placid water
and so entered geographic Antarctica
with the dawn ofhe new year.
.
He knew the Endurance could forge ahead
with 24 hours of summer daylight to gde her.
SHACKLETON: The rusouthward in blue water,
ing away
waa joyful experience
after the long struggle through the ice lanes.
STIERS: Nine days later,
the Endurance drew near to the coast of Antarctica,
a solid wall of ice with cliffs reaching over 100 feet.
Macklin was amazed
MACKLIN: It w an awe-inspiring sight,
and radiating fromts surface, an intense cold could be felt.
STIERS: By January 18, Shackleton was only a day's sl
om his lanng point at Vahsel Bay.
Once again, he was confronted by the pack.
With the promise of open water just beyond its grip,
Shackleton decided to enter.
Slowly, he realized this was a re dangerous type of ice:
the soft, snowy floes began to harden around the ship
like concrete.
Unable to push through
without drastically depleting their fuel,
Shackleton made a fateful decision.
They would stand stillnd wt.
The next day, Frank Wild Shackleton's second in command,
WILD ( dramatized ): We were so firmlenclosed by the pack
that no movement w possible, and from the masthead
not a sign of open water could be seen.
Shackleton was of course disappointed,
ee.
STIERS: With land 30 miles to the south,
Shackleton considered walking over the frozen ocean
to launch his Antarcticrossing.
But summeras halfway over, and time was against him.
FIENNES: Because just trying to cross
20 miles of loose sea ice with full sledges could take a month.
And when he got er that sea ice
he'de starting a vastly formidable journey
in a bad state.
But he did know that if he just stad on the ship,
they might get back out and have a good chance continuing.
STIERS: Confident in the man they called "the boss,"
the crew patiently waited, hopeful that a change in wind
would soon shatter the pack's grip.
Four newborn puppies provided the men
with a welcomed distraction.
Irish sailor T Crean nursed them like a father.
( puppies yipping )
Accordg to Worsley,
verything that was missing in the eatable line,
was stolen by Crean for the pups."
MAN: From the diaries, it would appear
that they were all made by Shackleton
to get on with the daily routine,
which obsly had the effect of keeping morale up.
And I think Shackleton himself, with his Irish background,
and ability to communica anjoin in,
made everybody feel that they were one.
It was a team, and not a "them and us" situation.
STIERS: As the delay dragged on, the men hunted seals and penguins
to supplement their provisions.
th temperatures plummeting to minus 30 degrees,
the meat froze immediately.
Since the sailor had little to do,
biologist Bobby Clark engaged them to pull up his wire dredge
from the ocean for, 3,000 feet bel.
( gs barking )
mething,
the men tricked him by slipping strands of spaghetti
into his container.
Although Shackleton had no great interest
in the worof the scientists,
they had helped him to raise money
by making his expedition respectable.
,
he insisted that everyone share equally
in the burden of ship's chores.
MAN: Although Shackton had gathered
a number of specialists around him,
many of these specialists were required to undertake tasks
that were wholly out with their previous experience.
signed on in order for his dical skills,
suddenly finding himself assigned
to being a dog team leader.
( dogs barking )
STIERS: With no experienced dog trainer on board,
Shackleton chose the men crossing the continent with him
to learn how to drive the teams.
Frank Wild and his beloved husky, Soldier,
would train one grp.
Huey got Shakespeare, "the HolHound,"
who he prais as "a maificent animal,
"that, as a companion, was better than some humans."
STIERS: As the men struggled with the tras,
yelled confusing commands, Shackleton lked on,
perhaps wondering if they could possib survi
ossing
with its treacherous crevasses and weather.
He asked Orde-Lees to try out the motorized tractor.
Brght to pull supplies acss the continent,
it had never been tested in belowero temperatures.
Ironically, it w easier to pl it than drive it.
Increasily anxio about their plight,
Orde-Lees, with his military background,
begged Shaleton to let himanage
their limited food supplies.
AYER: You know, he was the only serving officer,
and here were these, as he saw it, a bunch of amateurs,
sailing down to the Antarctic,
they had no care in the world.
And me his views known on the way down.
And then later on, seeing this profligate crew,
he made it his business to kind squirrel away food,
just in case.
Now, of course if you're a soldier,
you do have a feeling about life andth,
and you have a worst-case principle of managemt.
The lives of your n depend
onn officer thinking these things in advance.
Shackleton came from a wholly different school.
DE-LEES: He was one of the greatest optimists living...
STIERS: Observed Orde-Lees in his diary.
ORDE-LS: Optimism so often raises false hopes,
STIERS: On Valentines y,
open water appeared 600 yards ahead of the ship.
With no dynamite to blast their way through,
Shackleton ordered everyone out with saws and picks
to carve a channel through the pack.
Frank Hurley ctured their struggle on film.
For 48 hours they worked unceasingly,
but as fast as they broke the ice,
the pool of open water surrouing the ship froze over.
The Endurance couldn't batter her way through.
From the deck, Shackleton surveyed the 400 yards of ice,
tefeet thi, still blocking the ship, and accepted defeat.
Mackn recalled...
MACKLIN: Shackleton at is time
showed one of his sparks of real greatness.
He did not rage at all,
or show outwardly the slightest sign of disappointment.
He told us simply and calmly that we must winter in the pack,
explained its dangers d possibilities,
ner lost his oimism.
HUNTFORD: He realized at that moment
he was not going to be able to cross the contint.
So, although in his heart of arts, henew the game was up,
nonetheless, he had the quality of leadership--
he could hide his feelings and thoughts from his companions,
and he presented to them the mask that he wanted to present.
because at that point, he had to keep up their moralup.
And that involved keeping up the pretense
that the expedition could go on
because there is nothing that can crush a man
as to see his dreams crumble to the dust.
STIERS: In May, the sun sank below the horizon,
and the long Antarctic winter gan.
Shackleton was haunted by the knowledge
that men on earlier expeditions had been driven mad
by months of perpetual darkness.
Worried that disheveled appearances
รบ
he insisted that everyone crop their hair.
McNeish, the carpenter, obseed:
of convicts,
and we are not much short of that life at present,
.
STIERS: As the harsh weather descended,
the men settleinto their winterized quarters,
nicknamed "the Ritz.
Leonard Hussey,
amused the men with his banjo.
Hurley gave weekly lantern shows,
flickering images of past travels
across a makeshift screen.
Saturday evenings ended with the weekly toast:
rts,"
followed quickly by the chorus, "May they never meet."
On Sundays, the gang listened to recos
on a hand-cranked gramophone.
Among the recordings was Sir Ernest's account
of his last attempt toeach the South Pole in 1909.
( Shackleton's voice ): We retraced our steps
over cvassesthrough soft snow, encountering blizzards,
and eventually on t first of March
we arrived at winter quarters.
STIERS: Orde-Lees reflected:
ORDE-LEES: We seem to be a wonderfully happy mily,
ty.
Considering our divergent aims and difference of station,
its surprising how few differences of opinion occur.
STIERS: Nonetheless, friction lurked beneath the surface.
The costume parties and musical evenings
prompted McNeish to complain:
McNEISH: We have never had
but plen of filthy remar,
as there are few who can speak of anything else.
ct pig.
ORDE-LEES: I sit at the same table as McNeish,
ned company
would be good training for hut life,
but McNeish is a tough proposition.
First, he sucks his teeth loudly.
Then he produces a match
and proceeds to perform various dental operations.
STIERS: The tension of the polar nights was sometimes broken
by fantastic displays of the Southern Lights,
reminding Shackleton of the natural forces surrounding them.
SHACKLETON: We seem to be drifting helplessly
in a strange world of unreality.
It is reassuring to feel the ship beneath one's feet.
STIERS: Since heentrapment,
d drifted miles
through uncharted waters.
Worsley carefully checked the titude of the stars
h.
June 8, McNeish confided in his diary:
McNEISH: We have drifd 12 miles nearer home,
and the Lord be thanked for that much
as I am a bit sick of the whole thing.
STIERS Imoned by the ic
their fate lay in the nds of the winds and currents.
MAN: The drift of the pack ice ries with the strength of the wind.
When the wind's blowing strong,
the ice is moving rapidly to the north.
Of course, when the wind is blowing strong,
that usually when you have a blizzard.
But at least you knew at this time,
when the winds were rong d to the north,
that the ice was movin rapidly to the north
and eventually will take you out of this
STIERS: As winter receded,
how the light:
RSLEY: Every day, we see the glowing colors painted by the sun.
Every day they last a little longer
r.
STIERS: Ironically, as spring's thaw approache
blizzards became more frequent.
One of the worst hit in mid-July
with winds blowing over 70 miles per hour.
Its force caed grooves and channels into the pack,
scouring ice off the surface
and enveloping the ship like a sandstorm.
As the wind howled in the rigging,
Shaceton warned Worsley:
SHACKLETON: The ship can't live in this, Skipper.
It is only a matter of time.
What the ice gets, the ice keeps.
STIERS: When the blizzard subsided,
e surrounding pack appeared to Worsley...
WORSLEY: Disturbed by the tossing of a mighty git below.
Huge blocks of ice were piled up
in wild and threatening confusion.
STIERS: The eap of the pack had finally begun,
winds and currents created conflicting forces of pressure,
shaking the frozen sea to life.
FIENNES: When two ice fes
meet together under pressure, thleading edges bust
and th wh continued pressure
get forced up in between the two floes
up teven 30 feet high.
These big walls or pressure ridges
act like an enormous sail on a yacht.
And the wind can shift these million tons of floes
cracking the pack.
STIERS: According to Worsley:
WORSLEY: The noise was like an enormous train with squeaky axles
and underfoot, the moans and groans
of damnesouls in torment.
CARR: They were lying in their bunks
listening to this noise day and night.
And not only just listening to it,
nd worse,
because the pressure was buding up from storms
from allround parts of the Weddell Sea,
nd rance.
And parts of the boat were actually starting to come apart.
Some of the rigging was falling on deck.
She would get jolts and thunders.
I would imagine these men
were really beginning to fear for their lives.
STIERS: The crew struggled daily
to prevent the pressure of the ice from damaging the Enrance.
Then in October, the Antarctic spring,
thfloe beneath her bow broke in two.
Shackleton examined the crack,
hopeful the ice might release them.
Over the next few hours, water surrounded the hull.
Since there wasn't enough time to start the engines,
the men hoisted the sails.
But the Endurance was held fast.
The next day, the lead of open water froze er.
GORDON: Many ships are designed
to survive the pressures of the pack ice.
These shs have a round bottom.
As the pressure grows, the ship is lifted up out of the ice.
The Endurance was not such a ship.
While it did have some ice strength capabilities,
the pressure that the ice would exert on the hull
would crush it rather than move it up out of the ice.
STIERS: From the deck, the crew watched apprehensively
as enormous bloc of ice churned over each day
and ground through the floes.
*** Walter Howe recalled the assault on the Endurance
in a radio intview 40 years later.
HOWE: Well, the ice got her under the starard quarter
,
and threw her forward
and then she listed
beg
Itas there like avy fireworks and blasting of guns.
STIERS: As Shackleton surveyed the damage,
he appeared astonishingly calm.
His determined optimism defied the impending sense of doom.
HUNTFORD:
of complete self-contr, indifference,
And this was very calculed, because at every turn
his great trouble, his enemy, was not the ice,
but it was his own people,
in the sense, it was their morale.
That was the foe.
He had to prevent their morale from crumbling.
STIERS: roughout the night, McNeish the carpenter
struggled to repair the broken ship.
As water poured in, Orde-Lees helped man the pumps.
ORDE-LEES: We were just able to keep pace wi the leakage
Down aft, oncould hear
e ominous sod of the inrushing water.
Our little ship was hopelessly crushed
and helpless among the engulfing ice.
STIERS: At 9:00 p.m., Shacklet dered the lifeboats
lowered to the floe.
*** Walter Howe remembered the moment.
HOWE ( inadio interview ): He sent Frank Wild
along forward to our quarters,
who explained to us that it was a se of get out,
and to pack our bags with all necessary equipment we required
and to be prepared for any emergency.
STRS: The dawn of October 27 was, according to Shackleton
"a fateful day."
SHACKLETON: Though we have been compelled to abandon the ship
which is crushed beyond all hope,
we are alive, and have stores and equipment
for the task that lies before us.
I pray God I can manage
to get the whole party to civilization.
STIERS: As men and dogs struggled onto the ice
Orde-Lees expressed their shock.
ORDE-LEES: For the first time, we realized that we were face-to-face
with one of the gravest disasters
that can befall a polar expedition.
For the first time it came home to us that we were wrecked.
MAN: You've got to remember
that a sailor is a sailor and that's his ship, his home.
And on he's off th ship, he's at a loss.
So once the ship had gone, my grandfather, I know,
felt not at ease on the ice.
STIERS: Macklin wre:
MACKLIN: It must have been a moment
of bitter disappointment to Shackleton,
but as always with him, what had happened had happened.
Without emotion, melodrama or excitement, he said,
"Ship and ores have gone-- so now we'll go home."
HUNTFORD: Extricating yourself from defeat
is a strain that has broken many a man.
It did not break Shackleton.
He simply adapted to the new situation.
And he realized if the one goal had disappeared,
we'll have another one.
And so if I can't cross the continent,
m going to bring all men back alive.
Because you mustn't forget that polar explotion
was littered with dead bodies.
And so he felt, what I will do i
I will bring all my men back alive.
It was his version of the old saying
of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.
STIERS: Not anticipatingisaster,
Shackleton had brought only fe small tents
that would now have to shter 28 men.
To make matters worse, there were only 18 sleeping bags
made with reindeer fur.
Shackleton had the men draw lots
to see who would have to make do with woolen blanket bags.
JONATHAN: But he rigged it so that he and a couple of the other leaders
didn't get the best bags,
that members of the crew, ***, got the best bags.
That was aery big decision,
because it might have been a life-and-death decision
for Shackleton and his other officers
STIERS: Shackleton then assigned the men to their tents,
choosing the most difficul individuals to be with him.
WOMAN: Enmities can be sometimes extremely destructive
to the harmony of an expedition.
And so can alliances, so he moved people around
and noticed w people were getting on with each oth,
or not getting on with each other.
But it was all based on knowg his men.
ally
how to handle people
if you don't really notice what people are like.
And he was extremely observant.
STIERS: At dawn, Shaleton called the men to discuss his plan.