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where he knew supplies had been left by ipwrecked marine.
insula
to seek help from whalers known to hunt in Wilhelmina Bay.
Because the boaton sledges weighed over a ton apiece,
they were too heavy for the dogs to pull,
anwould have to be man-hauled.
Each individual could take
only a hanul personal belongings.
The puppies would have to be shot.
There simply was no extra food to spare.
( gunshot echoing )
The next day, 15 men, harnessed like dogs at the traces
strained to pull the lifeboats.
As the summer teerature climbed to 25 degrees,
they sank into the soft snow.
Soaked by sweat, racked by thirst,
it was killing work.
After 48 hours of excruciating effort,
they had covered less than two miles.
Unable to advance across the frozen ocean,
they would have to wait
and pray that the drift of the pack
would carry them closer to land.
BLACKBOROW: They werwell aware that it could get worse,
but at first, their immediate thoughts were survival,
and that is, to get some shelter,
to get some food down them and stabilize themselves.
So it was only as time went on
that they realized
and that was a ver depresng time for them all.
STIERS: The men searched for an ice floe
e safe
and dubbed it "Ocean Camp."
They would have to prepare to live on the ice.
A small group returned to the sinking Endurance
to salvage wd and rigging.
McNeish, the carpenter, wanted to build
e,
but was overruled by Shackleton.
Frank Hurley proposed sawing through the deck
to salvage sres from the flooded hold.
It was risky work, but Shackleton agreed.
Then Hurley risked his life to rescue his treasured negatives.
WOMAN: Now, when he rescued
all thosthings from the ship,
Shackleton appeared t scene.
And Shacklon wasn't at all happy about that--
going down in the waters to rescue all those things--
but without all that
there would have been no film of the Shackleton expedition.
STIERS: Since most of Hurley's negatives were glass plates,
they wertoo heavy to bring on the lifeboats.
Shackleton helped him select 1 of the best.
But despite Hurley's dismay, 400 would be left behind.
Shackelton d not like anybody going against him,
and a whole loof those plates had to be smashed.
AnShackleton stood by Dad while he smashed them,
because, I'm darned sure, Shackleton would have known
that Dad would have sneaked them aboard somehow.
STIERS: On Nov 21, 1915, the Endurance finally sank beneath the ice...
her valiant stggle immortalizedn Hurley's images.
Shackleton simply entered in his diary...
SHACKLETON: At 5:00 p.m. she wendown.
The stern was the last to go under the water.
I cannot write about it.
STIERS: After two months adrift on the ice, morale was crumbling.
Shacklet decided to make a second attempt
to march towar land.
Macklin described the desperate conditns.
nd
and running beside the sledge was terriblyard work.
But e dog drivers went ahead,
carrying pic and shove and making the road
oug
When they were pulling the boats in the sledges, Chippie was ill.
He was ravaged with piles, and the man was in agony.
The whole lot of them were in agony.
, eemed
an extraordinary expenditure of effort for little gain.
Demoralized and exhausted, he was losing faith
that Shackleton knew w to save em.
Suddenly, he refused to obey orde or march any farther.
WORDIE And heleaded
that sincehey had lost the sh, The Endurance,
no longer did ship's articles and discipline apply on the ice.
Shackleton rightly said that the discipline went on
regardless of whether the Endurance was lostr not.
TOM: Chippie was a man who didn't like being told what to do.
If Chippie didn't like it, Chippie would tell you.
This is the kind of man he was.
I mean, authority meant nothing to him
HUNTFORD: Shackleton had tquash this immediate,
because there was a hidden danger here
that the carpenter was voicing the opinions
of two or three other mbers of the crew
and more, for all we know.
And no leader, particularly on the edge of survil,
can tolerate the least threat to his authority.
STIERS: Confronted with the possible disintegrion
Shackleton gave a persuasive performance.
He insisted he was not only the lead of the expedition,
Was would be paid regardless of circumstance;
disobedience swiftly punished.
They would only survive as a team.
Reluctantly, McNeish backed down.
ALEXANDRA: his diary, my grandfather referred *** obliquely,
saying, "I shall never forgive the carpenter
in this time of storm and stress."
You see, he demanded total loyalty from his men,
and he offered total loyalty in return.
Itas a reciprocal, very close, impoant relationship.
That's why any discord, any disobedience,
he took personally.
l.
WILD: After seven days of the hardest imaginable labor,
we were stopped by ice so terribly broken and pressed up
that it was impossle to proceed any further.
The total result of this killing work was an advance of 7½ miles.
STIERS: Ironically, Worsley's navigational readings showed
that the drift of the pack had carried the men
further away froland thanhen they had started.
But for Shackleton, the march had served a vital purse.
HUNTFORD: By proving that it was futile,
he showed his men beyond a shadow of a doubt
that he d tried everything he possibly could
and erefore there could be no reproaches afterwards,
and this was vital notnly to ensure obedience to orders,
but it was vital to keep up morale.
STIERS: On New Year's Eve,
Hurley captured the regret that hung over the cluster of tents
named Patience Camp.
HURLEY: Our present position one cannot altogether regard as sweet,
drifting about on an ice floe
189 miles from the nearest known land.
Still, to apply an old sledging motto, it mighbe much worse.
STIERS: Hurley, who d been appointed
to the official post of fire kindler
made one New Year's resolution for 1916: one match, one meal.
Food became the men's only comfort.
For some, it was an obsession.
Only ten weeks' supply of flour w left
along with three months' of sledging rations.
To bolster their dwindling food supply,
Shacklon orderedeals and penguins to be hunted daily.
Anticipating their eventual migration,
Orde-Lees urged Shackleton to stockpile meat
for the approaching winter.
He refused.
AYER: My grandfather thought, as a military man,
that it was important to have supplies.
And the famous statement
that the army mahes on itstomach--
that seemed to him to be elementary,
and I think he regarded it as...
You know, Shackleton was a P.R. man,
as far amy grandfather was concerned-- raise the cash--
but there was a shallowness about Shackleton
that my grandfather would have found difficult to handle.
HUNTFORD: If you start stockpiling food,
it would mean that there was disaster ahead
anthey were having to prepare for some awful eventuality.
And Shackleton realized
this would have produced mental strain
ed
And faced between starvation and insanity,
Shaceton chose starvation as the lesser evil.
STIERS: Raer than stockpile food,
Shackleton ordered the dogs shot.
They consumed a seal a day,
whereas 28 men could feed off one animal for a week.
The teams were nlonger needed.
Sledging towards land was impossible
Frank Wild recalled:
WILD: This duty fell upon me,
st jo
I have known men I would rather shoot than the worst of dogs.
STIERS: Hurley found it...
HURLEY: A sad, unfortuna necsity.
Hail to thee, old Shakespeare.
I shall ever remember thee-- fearless, faithful and diligent.
STIERS: When the killing was over, Macklin grieved...
MACKLIN: I cut them up and dressed some of them for eating.
They'd no idea what they we in for
and drove gaily up to the scene of their execution.
STIERS: As the days dragged on,
Shackleton scribed in his diary.
SHACKLETON: Please God, we will soon get ashore.
STIERS: For three months, Patience Camp iftenorth wi the pack
beyond the reach of the Antarctic Peninsula.
As they approached the edge of the Weddell Sea,
Shackleton knetheir floe would soon break apart
and plotted their escape.
Powerful winds and currents
would drive their lifeboats northward
where their last chance of landfall was
land.
But if they missed this refuge of rock and ice,
they faced being swept into the treacherous southern ocean
As waves rolled from the north,
the ice moved up and down, breaking the floes apart.
ackleton kept a 24-hour watch,
ready to launch the boats when the pack open up.
GORDON: And it becomes a very dangerous situation,
because the icis breaking up.
It's moving apart and together very rapidly wh the waves
as they penetratthe ice.
And actly when to put the boats in the water...
If you put them in too early into a lead,
and then t ice just closes right up and crushes the boats,
then you'd be in big trouble.
If you stayed too long on the ice floe,
you might not have enough time
to prepare the boats to put into the water.
So the timing was ry important.
STIERS: On April 9, after 14 months of imprisonment by the ice,
the chance to save themselves d finally arrived.
But first, they would have to escape the grip of the pack.
*** William Bakewell remembered...
BAKEWELL: Our first day in the water was
one the coldest and most dangerous of the expedition.
It w a hard race to keep our boats inhe open leads.
We had many narrow escapes from being crushed.
STIERS: Nothing in their experience had prepar the men
for the ordeal to come.
Firsof all, for months and months on end
ese men had been on the ice, had been virtually landlubbers.
And most of them were certainly not small-boat people,
and there they were expected to maneuver open boats.
As if that were not enough, they were asked to cope
with t most difficult, the most dangerous conditions
on the surce of the earth, on the surface of the sea.
STIERS: The first two nights, Shackleton scanned the heaving ice
for a stable floe where he could rest his demoralized crew.
Thr desperate searching was etched indelibly
in artist George Marston's memory.
Relief was fleeting.
The men laid awake
to the sounds of the ice cracking under the tents
and killer whales circling in the darkness.
Thereafter they stayed in the boats, as Frank Hurley recalled.
HURLEY: Several tried to *** sleep,
but mostreferred rowing to lessen the pangs of shivering.
Everyone was wet, and achingly cold.
WORDIE: At the end of the period on the oars,
your hands had to be actually chipped off the oars.
It's very hard to imagine--
when you get down into a boa afr being rowing,
.
STIERS: A constant gnawing hunger took hold
as the meager rations dwindled.
WORDIE: There was no food.
ay,
which, as my father said, "We looked at r breakfast,
we sucked it for lunch and we ate it for dinner."
Thst was a probl,
and I think it was during that boat journey
that they chewed leather,
in order to keep their saliva going.
STIERS: On the fourth day of the journey,
Frank Worsley was at last able to determine their position.
The boats were 30 miles east of Patience Camp.
Treacherous currents were dragging them
into the open ocean.
an agonizing decision:
to retreat to the possible shelter of the Peninsula,
or defy the currts in a risky bid for Elephant Island.
Shackleton doubted the men could hold out much longer.
ALEXANDRA:
the essentials being food, water and sleep--
but not all three.
After at, he will not last very long.
STIERS: Shackleton thought,
SHACKLETON: Most of the men were now looking seriously worn and strained.
Their lips were cracked,
and their eyes and eyelids showed red
in their salt-encrusted faces.
I decided to run for Elephant Island.
STIERS: As night fell, they seemed no closer to land.
Shackleton sensed several men slipping away.
SHACKLETON: In the momentary light, I could see the ghostly faces.
I doubted if all the men would survive the night.
STIERS: At dawn, Frank Wild saw th the men were alive,
but their will to fight the seas was foundering.
WILD: At least halthe party were insane,
fortunately not violen simply helpless and holess.
STIERS: In the endless vista sea and ice,
Shackleton strained for a glimpse of land,
en suddenly, in the distance...
SHACKLETON: Elephant Island showed cold and severe in the full daylight.
STIERS: Worsley had been sleepless at the helm for over 80 hours.
Now he steered the lile fleetesolutely
toward the mist-bound island.
Finally,
the three boats plunged into the surging waters of the island.
Worsley searched the coast for a safe landing place.
WORSLEY: All this time, we were coasting along
beneath towering, cky cliffs and sheer glacier faces,
which offered not the slightest possibility
landing anywhere.
At 9:30 a.m., we spied a narrow, rocky beach
at the base of some very high ags and cliffs,
and made for it.
( surf roaring )
STIERS: Shackleton urged them on as the boats were swept io shore.
Then the men set foot on land for the first time in 16 months.
Hurley captured the long-awaed moment with his pock camera.
Worsley described their elation
as they hauled the boats onto the beach.
WORSLEY: Some of our men were almost light-headed,
as well as lighthearted.
When they landed they reeled about,
laughing uproariously.
STIERS Their joy spiraled out of control,
as scientist James Wordie watched helplessly.
WORDIE: Some flows, moreover, were half crazy.
One got an ax.
My father, in s diary,
described an extraordinary scene of killing seals,
slaughter for slaughter's sake...
( wailing )
WORDIE: ...a behavior which, in many cases,
could be described merely as insane.
Shackleton let them do this.
He didn't stop them immediately
and then, obviously,
he managed to restore a discipline, an order
into the situation.
That once more shows his power of keeping people together.
STIERS: Gratefully, the ravenous men ate
their first hot meal in five days.
Then Shackleton let them sleep.
SHACETON: I decided not to share with the men
uncertn
until they hadnjoyed rest,
untroubled by the thought that at any minute
.
HUNTFORD: No when Shackleton and his men landed on Elephant Island,
they'd come tonother crisis.
Shacklet had saved his men--
in the sense he'd got them all alive
out the ice and onto ter firma--
but now how to get back to civilization?
SHACKLON: There was no chanc
of any search being made for usn Elephant Island.
ivation and exposure had left their mark othe party,
c
were causing me serious anxiety.
A boat journey in search of relief was necessary.
Thatonclusion was forced upon me.
STIERS: Elepha Island was r from any shippinroute.
The nearest outpost of civilization
waar the tip of South America,
400 miles from Elephant Island,
but e prevailing winds and currents
woulprevent the boat from getting there.
Shackleton'sudacious new plan s to sail 800 miles
northeast to South Georgia,
where the voya of the Endurance began.
HUNTFO: Now...
Shackleton realized that there were very few people
who could survive an open-boat journey of that length,
because several men just about survived
the ort journey from t ice.
STIERS: There was no other choice.
s
Their bodiesere blighted by frostbite and open sores.
None were fit r such a voyage.
SHACKLETON: All hands knew that the perils
ofhe proposed journey were extreme.
I called the men together, explained my plan,
and asked for voluntee.
Many came forward at once:
STIERS: Captain Frank Worsley, who had cut his eth
navigating small boats in storm-tossed waters;
second officer Tom Crean,
a tough veteran two polar expeditions.
Able *** Tim McCarthy proved his mettle
the boat journey to Elephant Island.
A troublesome bully on land,
John Vincent appeared indestructible at sea.
Mutineer Chippy McNeish was also an unlikely choice,
plagued rheumism.
But Shackleton counted on the rebellious carpenter
make thrgest bo seaworthy for their voya.
HUNTFORD: The most important man on board ship
or;
it's the shipwright,
because 's the man who keeps her afloat
and makes her able to std the fury of the ocean.
He was one of the very few people alive
probably, o could ha ppared her
for the strains and buffeting of an ocnic voyage.
STIERS: With ingenuity and scavend parts,
McNeish raised her sides, covered her with a canvas deck,
and filled the seams with Marston's oil paints
and seal's blood.
On April 23rd, Shackleton gave orders
to ready the Caird for launch, leaving Frank Wild in charge.
SHACKLETON: The 20-foot boat had never looked big;
she appeared to have shrunk in some mysterious way.
ld.
I told him I trusd the party to him,
ansaid good-bye.
The who were staying behin
made a pathetic little group on t beach,
but they waved to us and gave three heay cheers.
Then we pushed off for the last time,
and wiin a few minutes, I was aboard the James Caird.
CARR: So they left Elephant Island,
probably all of them with about as much pe as nothing
to get to South Georgia.
They couldn't havehought they had much chance
in doing it, but what else could they do?
They had to do it.
They had to go, they had to try.
STIERS: Shackleton left behind a farewell letter.
SHACKLETON: In the event of my not surviving the boat journey,
you can convey my love to my people
and say I tried my best.
STIERS: The crew raised sail,
r weather
would carry the Cad to South Georgia.
It was the navigational equivalent
of finding a needle a haystack.
Worsley nned the first watch with Shackleton.
WORSLEY: We held her north byhe srs.
While I steered, Shackleton's arm thrown over my shoulder,
we disssed plans and yarnedn low tones.
STIERS: But weather in these latudes is notorioly unstable.
The daysollowing brought the freezing gales
that Shackleton had dreaded.
SHACKLETON: The sub-Antarctic Ocean lived up to its evil winter reputation.
STRS: Three seasick men braved the sleet ansnow,
while the othe cwled below into the floed hold to rest.
Worsley cosed,
WORSLEY: More than once, when I woke suddenly,
I had a ghastly fear at I was bied alive.
( sea swell crashi )
STRS: The gale carried the Caird onward,
but Shacklet couldn't be sure where.
HUNTFORD: Although Shackleton was the leer,
the man upon whom
the technical feasibility of the voyage depended
was Worsley,
because Worsley wathe navigator,
and if you're sailing 800 miles over the open se
navigation that gets you somewhere.
STRS: As Worsley estimated, the galepropelled the Caird
as much as 50 miles each day...
but unle he could determine their latitude and longitude
with the aid of a sextant,
they could be sailing hundreds of miles off course.
It's cd and...
he's going to really try
to bring the sun do to the rizon.
STRS: ating arct seas,
Tim and Pauline Carr know well the challenges Worsley face
The shrouded sun made it virtually impossible
take an aurate reading.
CARR: Captain Frankie Worsley's got his sextant
and he's trying to do his ad reckoning,
take his sights;
his eyes must have bn on the...
on the sun e whole time,
waiting r that little ball
to come out,
pierce through the...
through the dank clouds,
through thovercast.
's just hoping like mad ere's t gointoe a lurch
and he's going to get rown overboard.
STIERS: The violenpitching of the boat
could have thrown f his measurement and course by miles.
CARR: And he's bringg the sun down to thrizon,
waiting till he gets to the top of a swell,
and th shouts, "mark" down to Shackleton.
STIERS: The sights werjust the first step in a complex calculation
using igonometry and nautical tables.
And thene's got to go do, work out this sight
with wer and spray all over the place.
I just d't know.
He must ha been a magician.
STIERS: On the sixth day, the sun emerge
and Worsley's sights realed the Caird had sailed 238 miles.
They were w in the heart of the Southern Ocean.
Shackleton knew at one had ever survived
an open-boat journey in these wers.
SHACKLETON ( dramatized ): We were tiny speck in the vast vista of thsea.
us .
STIERS: The frail lifeboat was never meant to weather such a voya.
As the Caird plunged into yet another gale,
at
WORSLEY ( dramized ) Wh I rieved McCarthy at the hm--
the seas pouring down our nec--
I felt like swearing.
And he informed me with a cheful grin
rr."
SHACKLETON: Tim McCarthy was wonderfully optistic
.
And Shacon wrote about how much...
how important a person he was in that boat journey.
He didn't have skill as a navigator,
but heept thr spirits up.
RS: Shackleton shared a special bond with officer Tom Crean.
WOMAN: They were ls as well as workmat,
and I suppose they were a go team.
They clicked, in other words, the two of them.
STIERS: Shackleton would later recall:
SHACKLETON dramatized ): One of the memories that comes to me om tse ds
isCrean singing at the tiller--
he always sa ile he was steering,
and nobody ever discovered what the song was.
He had a poor voice,nly the words of everythin
He had a verpoor voice.
STIERS: As their drenched clothing froze on their bodies,
some of the men faltered
Strapping John Vincent lay petrified in the hold.
ippy McNeish was tormented by his aching legs,
but he stubbornl tended to the bo.
TOM McNEISH: There were waves coming at them, 30 feet.
At times it was swamped, and it rode through them.
And the next minute, it was covered in ice,
and it w getting too heavy with ice on it
she was starting to nk.
But they crawlll over it and break thice off it
to keep her afloat.
It must haveeen horrendous.
They must have been rrifd.
STRS: the storm raged,
Shackleton wated over each man with obsessive care.
HUNTFORD: What kept them from cracking on this journey
was, again, Shacklet's sheer willpower, his leadership,
this flame that burns within him.
He understood that when men are at the limits of surval,
they have toe rsed.
He noticed it if any man was particularly unable toope,
and he ordered hot mil not just for him, but for everyone,
so this man wod not, as he put it, have doubts abouhimself.
d then the nexminu he was a martinet driving his men on,
always adapting circumstances.
izing
Worsley wrote in his diary, "However bad things re,
"he somehow inspired us wi the feeli
that he could make things tter."
STRS: The gas relented on the1th da
Worsley called it a "Day's Grace."
He watch an albatross soar overhead,
the fabled good omen of mariners.
WORS( dramatized ): Hipoetic motion fascinated us--
the ease with which he swept the miles aside filled us with envy.
He could have made our whole journey in ten hours.
IERS: Worsley's sigh revealed that they had sailed 496 miles.
Now, precisi was everything.
He adjusted the course for South Georgia.
Ife erred by just half a degree,
the Caird would miss the island
d sail into the limitless South Atlantic.
The
seeming to speed their passage.
.
If Worsley was right,
they could be st two days from South Georgia.
But it seemed like an eternity--
the sun and salt-tainted water stirred a raging thirst.
t.
Once again, the Caird plied an uncertain course.
Then, on t 15th day, seaweed floated on the swells,
a sure sign of ld.
With hushed expectation, e men scand the seas ahead.
n,
McCarthy raised the cheerful cry--
"Land ho!"
The thoughts uppermo we "We've done it
STIERS: They had accomplished
what my regard as the grst small-boat journey in the world:
800 miles across the stormiest seasn rth
in a 22-foot vessel.
It was a colossal achievement.
When they saw the black peaks of South Georgia,
huge relief and happiness,
but the storwa noque er yet.
STIERS: The winds suddenly rose.
In their hour of triumph, safety slipped from their grasp.
The boat was caught in the fury of hurricane-force winds.
Shacklon despaired of ever reaching lan
SHKLETON ( dramatized ): The chance of surviving the night,
with the driving gale and the implacable sea
forcing us onto the lee shore, seemed small.
I think most of us had a feeling at the end was very near.
HUNTFORD: And this is where Worsley came into his own,
cause he understood the way a iling ship word.
And so he performed a micle ere;
somehow he clawed his way offshore.
STIE: Worsley haed the Caird away from the rocky coa
to s outhe gale.
By morning, the seas calmed
and Shacklon ordered the boat into shore.
SHACKLETON ( dramatized ): I stood in the bow, was directing the steering
as we ran througthe kelp, and made the passage of the re.
In a minute or two we were inside,
and the James Caird ran in on a swell, and touched the beach.
MAN: l right, ve got it.
HUNTFORD: What got the James Caird to South Georgia
was a combination of luck and skill.
The skill was rsley'- this blliant navigor,
is wonderful small-bo handler.
But there is always the element of luc
And iss where we come to the great ionderable:
Shackleton was a lucky man.
He was lucky.
STIERS: Afte17ays at sea,
the six men stumbled ashore to their long-sought haven.
Relieved to be on solid grou