My father never...
...to any of us, his children, ever discussed that expedition.
Occasionally, an odd statement came out...
...but he never let us read his diaries when he was alive.
They were locked up.
My father never spoke. He did say they had a tough time.
We were a bit too young to listen to him.
But apart from that at all, l never heard him speak much about it.
The 1 9 1 4 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition...
...under the leadership of polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton...
...would have been the last great journey in the heroic Age of Discovery.
It was a daring scheme.
A small party was to cross the Antarctic continent for the first time.
According to legend...
...Shackleton announced the expedition in a now-famous advertisement.
''Men wanted for hazardous journey.
Small wages, bitter cold...
...long months of complete darkness...
...constant danger, safe return doubtful.
Honor and recognition in case of success. Ernest Shackleton.''
My grandfather, Col. Orde-Lees, was always looking for an opportunity...
...to do something exceptional.
And such an ad would have been catnip to my grandfather.
He couldn't resist it.
Chippy McNish saw an advertisement in the paper...
...looking for men to go to Antarctica...
...and it said that you might not return.
So he went and seen about it and got there.
Five thousand men...
...from sailors to Cambridge-educated scientists, responded.
Like Ernest Shackleton, they were drawn by hopes of adventure and glory.
l had a dream when l was 22...
...that someday l would go to the region of ice and snow...
...and go on and on till l came to one of the poles of the Earth.
Exploration had earned Shackleton fame and a knighthood...
...but he had still not realized his dream.
Twice before, he had set out to claim the South Pole...
...and twice he had returned defeated...
...ultimately losing this prize to Norwegian Roald Amundsen.
Shackleton's new venture captured the British imagination.
Not all, however, were impressed.
First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, for one...
...viewed the famous explorer as a mere adventurer...
...and dismissed his latest project.
''Enough life and money has been spent on this sterile quest, '' he wrote.
''The pole has already been discovered. What is the use of another expedition?''
Nevertheless, in August 1 9 1 4, after seven frantic months of preparation...
...Shackleton and his crew of 2 7 men were poised for departure.
But even as his ship set sail...
...the world in which Shackleton's dream had been conceived was coming apart.
World War I broke out in Europe.
Shackleton offered his ship and men to Britain's war effort.
The Admiralty declined the offer in a single word: ''Proceed. ''
Shackleton's ship, Endurance, was named for his family motto:
''By endurance we conquer. ''
The phrase that summed up Shackleton's own drive and resilience.
He was determined not to repeat earlier mistakes...
...that had cost him the prize of the South Pole.
Following the successful Norwegians...
...Shackleton brought along 69 Canadian sled dogs.
Food supplies would also be depoted for the six-man sledging party...
...that would make the 1 500-mile journey across the Antarctic continent.
Shackleton's own ship would approach Antarctica...
...from the ice-strewn waters of the little-known Weddell Sea.
The sea's gateway was the island of South Georgia...
...the Endurance's last port of call.
An outpost of humanity amidst the frozen wastes...
...the island was home to small whaling communities...
...run by company men.
A local priest romantically described these whalers...
...as a ''motley race of former noblemen and other fallen creatures...
...who now strip blubber or render oil.
Many, if not most, are at odds with life. ''
Ernest Shackleton had something in common with these loners and outsiders.
Born in Ireland, he had married the daughter of a well-to-do English lawyer...
...but he was an indifferent husband and father.
A restless soul, he had always been happiest on his far-flung expeditions.
He once wrote to his wife:
''Sometimes I think I am no good at anything but being away in the wilds. ''
Shackleton was not your 9-to-5 man, your commuting type.
He wanted to be a great man. He was searching for greatness, for reputation.
And in a sense, l think he would have stuck at nothing...
...to achieve fame and fortune.
For all of November, Shackleton and his crew waited...
...hoping that unusually icy conditions in the Weddell Sea that austral spring...
...would improve.
Expedition photographer Frank Hurley began his record...
...by capturing images of exotic wildlife for an eager British audience.
The sale of film and photo rights...
...had been crucial to financing the costly venture.
Perce Blackborow, a young Welsh stowaway...
...sometimes served as Hurley's assistant.
Blackborow had fallen in love with the Endurance...
...when she had docked in Buenos Aires on her way south.
Mrs. Chippy, the carpenter's popular tomcat...
...also along for the ride, had fallen overboard on the outward journey.
The ship had turned around to pick him up.
The crew took advantage of their last opportunity to send letters home.
Navigator Huberht Hudson wrote his father:
''Dear old Dad, just a line before we sail.
We've had a very good time so far, and l think we shall do well.
l hope to be home again within 1 9 months and go straight to the front.
What a glorious age we live in!''
By early December, Shackleton could delay no longer...
...if he were to take advantage of the Antarctic summer.
All his resources had been committed to the expedition...
...and behind him, Europe was at war.
Twice before, he had seen his dream snatched from him.
He was now 40 years old, and this was his last chance.
On December 5, 1 9 1 4, the Endurance left the island and headed south.
On the third day, they encountered the enemy.
The huge, compacted chunks of surface water known as ''pack ice. ''
The pack stretched to the horizon...
...broken only by gaps of open water known as leads.
The challenge would be to navigate the shifting, 1 000-mile tangle of leads...
...all the way to the continent.
Dr. Alexander Macklin, a Scottish surgeon and one of the dog minders...
...recorded his observations of the ship's high-spirited captain, Frank Worsley.
Worsley specialized in ramming, and l 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 sensation as the ice gave and we drove through it.
Some days, the ship was held up by ice.
On others, she made long runs in open water.
After six weeks of travel, the Endurance was only 1 00 miles from the continent...
...when she entered a field of heavy brash ice, slowing the ship to a crawl.
Capt. Worsley recorded a fateful decision.
The character of the pack has again changed. The floes are very thick.
We cannot push through except with a very great expenditure of power.
We therefore prefer to lie to for a while...
...to see if the pack opens at all when this northeast wind clears.
When day broke, the men found the ice had closed around the ship.
No water was visible in any direction.
As the days passed, the ice showed no sign of relenting.
The event that sealed their fate was recalled years later...
...in a radio interview by expedition meteorologist Leonard Hussey.
On the 1 4 of February, 1 91 5, the temperature suddenly dropped...
...from 20 degrees above zero to 20 degrees below...
...and the whole sea froze over and we froze in with it.
An unexpected lead opened up 400 yards ahead...
...offering a chance to reach open water.
Of course we had no explosive to blast our way out.
We just had picks and shovels.
For 48 hours, the men attacked the ice.
Frank Hurley, who filmed the men's exhausting bid for freedom...
...wrote in his diary:
All hands hard at it till midnight...
...when a survey is made of the remaining two-thirds.
Itis reluctantly determined to relinquish the task...
...as the remainder of the ice is unworkable.
They were trapped until spring, some seven months away.
Beyond even radio contact, no one in the world knew where they were.
They had been thwarted only one day's sail from their destination.
In his diary, Dr. Macklin wrote:
Itwas more than tantalizing. Itwas maddening.
Shackleton, at this 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.
Never lost his optimism and prepared for the winter.
Optimism was at the very core of Ernest Shackleton's personality.
Known to all as ''the Boss, '' he was a born leader...
...who was, from his youth, driven by a romantic quest for adventure.
At 1 6, he had shipped out as a cabin boy.
By 2 4, he was certified as a master in the merchant marine service.
Shortly after, he was chosen as an officer...
...on Robert Falcon Scott's historic first voyage.
There, he saw tensions flare among men of different personalities and classes...
...thrown together in close quarters...
...and watched as morale eroded under Scott's inadequate leadership.
Shackleton knew he could do better.
Now his own expedition was in trouble...
...trapped in the pack ice, drifting helplessly north.
The crew, restless.
Col. Thomas Orde-Lees, the storekeeper and motor expert...
...irritated everyone with his superior airs.
In a characteristic diary entry, he observed:
l have made a point of sitting at the same table as the 4th officer...
...and the carpenter, who is a perfect pig in every way.
l've done this to try and accommodate oneself to ideas and ways...
...less refined than one's own.
Others shared his distaste for mingling with different classes.
McNish, the carpenter, had blunt words of his own for the superior motor expert.
Orde-Lees is laid up with a sprained back. He was shoveling snow yesterday.
The first work he has done since we left London.
Shackleton insisted the men keep to a strict daily routine...
...and carefully monitored their morale.
When dissension threatened, Shackleton was prepared to act forcefully.
John Vincent, a heavyweight wrestling champion caught bullying the sailors...
...was summoned to Shackleton's cabin.
He left demoted.
Everyone, including the Boss himself, would work together.
Seaman Walter How remembered:
Everybody mucked in. Itdidn't matter who they were or what they were.
Their qualifications didn't count for anything.
Scientist James Wordie found himself assigned to a cleaning brigade.
Everybody was prepared to join in whatever was happening...
...whether it be scrubbing the floor....
And l think Shackleton himself, with his lrish background...
...and ability to communicate and join in, made everybody feel that they were one.
Itwas a team and not a them-and-us situation.
He also communicated to his men...
...that he put them above the object of the expedition.
The object was great, but they were more important.
Second-in-command Frank Wild had been with Shackleton in 1 909...
...when the Boss, running out of supplies...
...gave up the pole in order to save his party from certain death.
Wild had watched him turn back just 97 miles short of the prize.
One night, with both men close to starvation...
...Shackleton had forced upon Wild a biscuit from his own meager rations.
Wild recorded:
l do not suppose that anyone else can thoroughly realize...
...how much generosity and sympathy was shown by this.
l do. By God, l shall never forget it.
The floating landscape convulsed into pressure ridges...
...became more difficult to negotiate.
Ice claimed their entire horizon.
As they drifted, Shackleton was mindful of the fate of the ship Belgica.
She also had been frozen for a winter on the pack...
...and her crew had succumbed to infighting, and ultimately, insanity.
The men turned to the dogs, who quickly became indispensable companions.
Hurley recorded:
A few words about my dogs.
Shakespeare, aliases Tatchco, the Holy Hound, and Bug Whiskers...
...is a magnificent animal, somewhat resembling an English sheepdog.
He is a noble creature, dignified in gait...
...master of the team in battle and a leader in canine sagacity.
A good leader will ferret out the best track through broken country...
...will not allow fights in the team, or indulge in capricious antics.
A team of nine dogs can haul about 1 000 pounds.
My team is one of the best.
The birth of four puppies captivated the entire company.
Tom Crean, tough sailor that he was, became their adopted father.
The men passed the long months with soccer matches.
With theatrical evenings....
With weekly gramophone concerts...
...and a memorable haircutting tournament.
McNish recorded:
We do look a lot of convicts, and we are not much short of that life at present...
...but still hoping to get to civilization someday.
By May, they had been trapped for over three months.
The sun disappeared beneath the horizon...
...leaving days dark as night until the end of winter.
The neat piles of sledging supplies...
...mocked Shackleton's ambition and the dreams of his men.
Meanwhile, ominous forces were at work.
Ice, their old enemy, menaced the helpless ship.
Under pressure of the tightly congested pack...
...huge blocks of ice buckled into ridges, threatening to crush her.
In July, a blizzard raked the Endurance.
As the ice groaned and heaved, Shackleton paced his cabin.
Capt. Worsley recalled:
He said to me, ''The ship can't live in this, skipper.
lt's only a matter of time. What the ice gets, the ice keeps.''
The Endurance survived, but as winter turned to spring, assaults continued.
In an interview 40 years later, sailor Walter How...
...still remembered the ship staggering under the blows.
The ice got around to the starboard quarter, and lifted her bodily as it were...
...and then she listed very heavily to port...
...and the timbers began to crack and groan.
Did you hear the timbers going as the ice tided?
You couldn't avoid it. Itwas there like heavy fireworks and blasting of guns.
Together, Shackleton and Wild surveyed ice damage.
Orde-Lees recorded:
Sir Ernest must have gone through terrible anxiety lately...
...though he is so inscrutable that no one could have detected anything unusual.
l know for a fact that he did not once lie down for three days...
...and l don't think he had undressed for 1 0 days.
Tirelessly, the men worked to cut the ice away from the ship.
Even the usually stoic McNish was shaken. He wrote:
There were times when we thought it was not possible the ship could stand it.
Everyone got our warm clothes put up in as small a bundle as possible.
l have placed my loved one's photos inside Bible.
In late October, the ice struck with renewed force...
...opening planks of the starboard side. Water flooded the hold.
All hands manned the pumps for three days and nights to save the Endurance.
Hurley wrote:
The ship groans and quivers.
Windows splinter while the deck timbers gape and twist.
Amid these profound and overwhelming forces...
...we are the absolute embodiment of helpless futility.
On October 2 7, 1 9 1 5, 1 0 months after their entrapment in the ice...
...Shackleton gave the order to abandon ship.
Seaman How recalled:
Shackleton sent Frank Wild along forward...
...who explained to us that it was a case of ''get out.''
Previously, Sir Ernest had probably seen the red light...
...and sledges were packed with as much stores as possible.
You've got to remember that a sailor is a sailor and that's his ship, his home.
Once he's off that ship, he's at a loss.
The adventurers of the expedition...
...the people that expected to stay, and knew what they were up against...
...like Tom Crean, Worsley, Shackleton himself, Wild...
...they adapted a little bit easier...
...but it was still tough.
They had been reduced to a fraction of their original provisions...
...and to three of the ship's four lifeboats.
It was minus 1 5 degrees Fahrenheit.
Tents and clothing had been salvaged...
...but there were not enough fur sleeping bags to go around.
William Bakewell, an American sailor, recalled the lottery Shackleton arranged.
There was crooked work in the drawing...
...as Sir Ernest, Mr. Wild, Capt. Worsley and other officers...
...all drew wool bags.
The fine warm fur bags went to the men under them.
In the chill morning, Shackleton gathered the company to explain his plan.
Dr. Macklin recorded:
As always with him, what had happened had happened.
Without emotion, melodrama or excitement he said:
''Ship and stores have gone, so now we'll go home.''
This calm front belied the night Shackleton passed, pacing the ice alone.
The thoughts that came to me in the darkness were not cheerful.
The task now was to secure the safety of the party...
...and to that l must apply every bit of knowledge...
...that experience of the Antarctic had given me.
There is nothing that can crush a man...
...as to see his dreams crumble to the dust.
But on the other hand, he realized...
...if the one goal had disappeared, we'll have another one.
And so, if l can't cross the continent, l'm going to bring all my men back alive.
Because you mustn't forget that polar exploration was littered...
...with dead bodies.
This almost fanatic-- Itwas a fanatic desire to bring his men back alive.
This then became the driving force. Itwas the only thing he cared about.
That change from aiming to attain what you had set out...
...to extricating yourself from defeat...
...is a strain that has broken many a man. Itdid not break Shackleton.
Shackleton's first impulse was to march to the nearest land...
...some 350 miles to the west.
The men were allowed 2 pounds of possessions, with few exceptions.
Hussey was allowed to keep his banjo...
...which Shackleton called ''vital mental medicine. ''
But there could be no extra mouths to feed.
On Shackleton's orders, three puppies and Mrs. Chippy...
...were shot.
l feel sure that it is the right thing to attempt a march.
lf we can make 5 or 7 miles a day...
...our chance of reaching safety will be greatly increased.
Itwill be better for the men to feel they are on their way to land...
...than to sit down and wait.
But after three days of hard slogging, they were still within sight of the ship.
The march to land had proved futile.
Now there was nothing to do but watch and wait.
Food and supplies were salvaged from the collapsing ship.
The men scoured her broken deck...
...retrieving what they could and hauling it back to camp.
Frank Hurley conducted a salvage operation to his submerged darkroom.
He wrote:
l hacked through the thick walls of the refrigerator...
...to retrieve the negatives stored therein.
They were located beneath 4 feet of mushy ice...
...and by stripping to the waist and diving under, l hauled them out.
Together he and Shackleton selected 1 20 negatives...
...and sealed them in tin canisters.
The remaining 400, Shackleton had Hurley destroy...
...so he would not be tempted to recover them later.
Hurley retained a single vest-pocket Kodak camera and three rolls of film.
On November 2 1, the broken ship sank for good beneath the ice.
Shackleton recorded simply:
At 5 p.m. she went down.
l cannot write about it.
Now nothing remained of the Endurance and her long battle...
...except Hurley's images.
Once the ship had gone, my grandfather, l know...
...felt ill, not at ease on the ice.
Itwas a new thing. l mean, he'd seen snow as a kid...
...but never set foot on an iceberg like that. So it was a new...
...a new ballgame, so to speak.
ln their minds was, like any human being, l think:
''Are we going to get out alive?''
The drift of the pack had carried the men 1 300 miles since they were trapped.
Now they hoped the same drift would bring them to land.
If not, they were bound for open sea.
Hurley wrote:
Itis beyond conception even to us that we are dwelling on a colossal ice-raft...
...with 5 feet of frozen water separating us from 2000 fathoms of ocean.
And drifting along under the caprices of wind and tides, to heaven knows where.
Timbers from the ship were used to build a new home: Ocean Camp.
The wheelhouse became the new galley.
Hurley ingeniously converted part of the ship's boiler into a stove...
...which was fuelled by penguin skin and seal blubber.
A daily routine was established.
Hunting for penguins and seals became the main activity.
Each man knew rescue was impossible.
They were managing to stay alive, but to what end?
They had a pretty miserable time on the ice.
But having said that, in the end...
...at every turn...
...Shackleton's 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.
The ice was nothing. Anybody can deal with the ice...
...but to deal with the human spirit, that is very difficult.
One month after abandoning ship...
...a bout of sciatica sent Shackleton to his tent for two weeks.
Emerging after his forced confinement...
...he made the surprising decision to attempt a second march to land.
In his memoir he related:
A buzz of pleasurable anticipation went round the camp at this announcement.
Nothing was further from the truth.
The men dragged the loaded lifeboats weighing more than a ton apiece...
...hacking their way through pressure ridges that obstructed their passage.
At times they trudged up to their knees in snow.
On the fourth day McNish dug in his heels.
Earlier, he had proposed to build a sloop from the wreckage of the Endurance.
Shackleton had rejected the plan.
Now McNish openly rebelled and refused to continue.
His duty to obey orders, he asserted, had ended with abandonment of the ship.
Chippy was a man who didn't like to be told what to do.
You know what l mean? lt's all on who you were.
lf Chippy didn't like it, Chippy would tell you.
That's just the kind of man he was. l mean, authority meant nothing to him.
Shackleton called the men together and read ship's articles...
...dramatically asserting his command.
Despite the loss of the ship, he announced...
...all men would be paid wages until they reached port.
McNish backed down. Mutiny was averted.
No leader on the edge of survival can tolerate...
...the least threat to his authority.
And Shackleton, in fact, was prepared to shoot the carpenter if necessary.
And he would have been justified because there was a hidden danger here.
That the carpenter was only voicing...
...the opinions of two or three other members of the crew...
...and more for all we know.
And had this not been crushed immediately...
...the whole party would have disintegrated.
Two days after the standoff with McNish...
...Shackleton was forced to realize his own error.
He called a halt to the march.
In his diary Shackleton wrote:
Turned in but could not sleep. Am anxious.
Everyone working well except the carpenter:
l shall never forget him in this time of strain and stress.
Shackleton had put down the rebellion...
...but he could not quell all doubts that threatened to erode his authority.
A week of backbreaking effort had left his men worse off than before.
Precious equipment had been left behind.
Life at their new base, Patience Camp, would be much harder.
More questions arose about the Boss's judgment.
Food was running out, but Shackleton had imposed...
...strict limitations on the amount of penguin and seal meat stockpiled...
...insisting he would get them off the ice before winter.
Lionel Greenstreet, the first officer, openly questioned the Boss' philosophy:
His sublime optimism all the way through is, to my mind, absolute foolishness.
Everything was going to turn out all right and no notice was taken of things...
...possibly turning out otherwise. And here we are.
Shackleton retorted:
You're a bloody pessimist.
For once, Orde-Lees voiced the fears of many.
They had to have meat, he put on record...
...in the event of another winter on the floes.
Itwas important to have, just like ammunition, to have supplies.
And the famous thing, the statement of Wellington, wasn't it?
That ''the army marches on its stomach''? That seemed to him to be elementary.
In the end, it was the Boss's vision that prevailed.
Shackleton's great characteristic was the ability to compel loyalty...
...even against his men's better judgment.
Now this has got to do...
...with some force of character, some flame that burns within a man.
Game grew scarcer. There was no food for the dogs.
Shackleton gave Wild the unhappy command...
...to shoot some of the dog teams.
Hurley paid a last tribute to his old companion.
Hail to the thee, old leader Shakespeare. l shall ever remember thee:
Fearless, faithful and diligent.
Within weeks, the remaining teams were shot, and this time eaten.
McNish wrote:
Frank Wild shot the last of our faithful dogs...
...of which we kept the five young ones for food.
And their flesh tastes a treat after living so long on seal meat...
...and this last 1 4 days on almost nothing.
As the men drifted to the edge of the pack...
...the ice began to disintegrate around them.
One day Orde-Lees awoke feeling seasick.
The ice had become so thin that the swell of the ocean could be felt through it.
Soon, nothing would be left beneath them.
Finally, Shackleton felt that they had to get onto their boats...
...and make for an island to escape from the ice.
The problem then was, where were they going to go?
And there's an intriguing collection of island silhouettes...
...which Worsley took with him so that when they saw a little land...
...they knew where they were.
Otherwise how did they know what they would see?
Their navigation, however brilliantly it was done, was primitive.
And they embarked on this boat journey from the ice...
...not knowing where they were going to end up.
Several landfalls were possible.
The closest were Clarence and Elephant Islands, some 1 00 miles to the north.
Deception Island, over 1 50 miles to the west...
...was known to have supplies for shipwrecked mariners.
Shackleton chose Deception Island.
Their three small lifeboats would carry all 28 men...
...on a journey that would last no one knew how long.
Sailor William Bakewell recalled the landmark day of departure:
Our first day in the water...
...was one of the coldest and most dangerous of the expedition.
The ice was running riot.
Itwas a hard race to keep our boats in the open leads.
We had many narrow escapes from being crushed...
...when the larger masses of the pack would come together.
During the first few days of their journey...
...they pulled their boats from the water each evening to sleep.
Without the movie camera and with little film to spare...
...it would be left to artist George Marston...
...to record their tenuous camps on the drifting ice.
Leonard Hussey and Walter How recalled the night when disaster struck:
We were drifting over the sea on a piece of ice and we were cold and frozen.
Pitch dark night once...
...and the ice split right across under the men's tent.
There were eight of us turned in there.
One poor chap, name of Holness...
...him and his sleeping bag dropped into the drink.
Shackleton looked into the crack...
...and he saw a man floating in his sleeping bag.
Shackleton grabbed Holness and lifted him in his bag up onto the ice...
...knowing he could survive only minutes in the freezing water.
Seconds later the ice-edges came together with tremendous force.
l remember Shackleton saying to Holness, ''Are you all right?''
''Yes, sir,'' he said, ''l'm quite all right.
Only thing l regret, my bloody tobacco's down there in the drink.''
Shackleton recorded:
Constant rain and snow squalls blotted out the stars and soaked us through.
Occasionally the shadows of silver, snow and fulmar petrels flashed close.
And all around we could hear the killers blowing...
...their short, sharp hisses sounding like sudden escapes of steam.
The sheer hardship of the rowing.
My father said that at the end of a watch...
...your hands had to be chipped off the oars.
And it's very hard to imagine what it must be like...
...when you try to get some sleep. Your hands must be totally frozen.
Your clothes are probably soaked and you're hungry.
The days passed in painful rowing and bailing.
Stable ice could not be found...
...and nights were now spent sitting helpless in the black sea.
To complete their misery...
...many of the men were now suffering from dysentery.
l think they only had one hot drink a day.
And he said that they only ate a ship's biscuit...
...which in his own phrase:
''You look at it for breakfast, you suck it for lunch and you eat it for dinner.''
What kept them from cracking...
...was Shackleton's sheer willpower, his leadership.
This flame that burns within him.
And this was manifested in different ways.
Either it was Shackleton playing...
...the consummate mariner at the prow of the boat...
...leading his little squadron to safety, or it was mothering his men.
Suddenly turning around and comforting somebody or preparing food for him.
And acting, basically, like a hen with one chicken.
And the next minute he was a martinet, driving his men on.
lt's hard to imagine...
...and yet they probably were seeing things of great beauty on that journey.
We were all laced together, the three boats...
...on account of the bad weather, and during the night several whale...
...l don't know what species, were blowing around us.
And had they gone over one of our tow ropes...
...the three boats would have certainly disappeared.
And also us.
For days and nights with no sleep, the helmsmen manned the tillers.
When Worsley was relieved of his shift, he had to be lain in the boat...
...and opened slowly from his crouching position like a jackknife.
Overwhelmed by misery and fear, some of the men broke down and wept.
Now Shackleton knew he must make for land at any cost.
Changing course, they struck out for Elephant Island.
On the evening of the sixth day, the skies to the northwest darkened...
...and a gale swept down.
Swamped with water, one of the lifeboats was in danger of sinking.
Orde-Lees, who up until then had disdained to row...
...rose to the crisis and bailed for his companions' lives.
My grandfather was always a man who wanted to do a feat.
Rowing, there's no possibility of doing a feat.
l mean, everybody's on the same oar rowing, like that.
Bailing out? Saving everybody's life? Gosh, l mean, that's sort of...
...a part made in heaven for my grandfather...
...because everybody would be aware he'd been up all night bailing them out.
So gentlemen don't row...
...but by Jove, they'd do anything necessary to save people's lives.
When dawn broke, Shackleton recorded:
The weather was very thick in the morning.
lndeed, at 7 a.m. we were under the cliffs...
...which plunged sheer to the sea before we saw them.
Elephant Island.
The men had been seven bleak days at sea...
...and over five months on drifting ice.
It was a year and four months since they had touched land.
With frostbitten fingers, Hurley recorded the landing.
In his diary, Hurley wrote:
Many of the party were emaciated by exhaustion, fatigue and exposure.
Many suffered from temporary aberration, or shivering as with palsy.
The men reeled along the beach as if drunk...
...some burying their faces in the stones.
Wordie recalled more chilling behavior.
Some fellows were half-crazy.
One got an axe and did not stop until he had killed about 1 0 seals.
Shackleton ordered food prepared.
It was the first hot meal in three days.
Hurley described the first night.
Tents were hastily erected, all turned in...
...and almost instantly were deep in slumber.
How delicious to wake in one's sleep...
...and listen to the croaks of penguins mingling with the sea.
To fall asleep and awaken again, and feel this is real.
We have reached land.
Land, such as it was, was a low sliver of beach that offered no shelter.
Two days later, Shackleton led the men...
...to a second location on the western side of the island.
The new campsite was called Cape Wild, after Frank Wild.
To the sailors it was Cape Bloody Wild.
The boats landed in sleet and rain.
By night a gale blew up, ripping one of the tents to shreds...
...and blowing equipment out to sea.
Men crawled under the boats for shelter, and lay shivering in their tunics...
...as the wind heaped snow upon them.
The blizzard raged for five days.
l think l spent, this morning, the most unhappy hour of my life.
All attempts seemed so hopeless...
...and fate seemed absolutely determined to thwart us.
Men sat and cursed, not loudly, but with an intensity that showed...
...their hatred of this island on which we had sought shelter.
Shackleton had saved his men in the sense he'd got them all alive...
...out of the ice and on to terra firma. But now how to get back to civilization?
Elephant lsland was off...
...any conceivable shipping route. Not only that, she was nowhere near...
...the routes of the whalers and sealers that used to come down there.
So somehow Shackleton had to get his men...
...to a port of call, even if it was only a lonely island where the sealers came.
Staring down impossible odds, Shackleton made a bold decision.
He would not wait, he would sail for rescue.
Cape Horn, the closest land, was beyond reach...
...as it would mean sailing against the prevailing wind.
In the path of the westerlies was the island they'd set out from:
South Georgia.
The plan was made.
Shackleton would take a 22-and-a-half-foot-long boat...
...800 miles across the world's most dangerous ocean.
Work began immediately on the James Caird.
Earlier, McNish had raised her gunnels with wood from packing cases.
Now he scavenged the other two boats to reinforce her.
The seams were sealed with Marston's oil paints and seal's blood.
Her deck was canvassed.
Itwasn't only that McNish was a good shipwright, a good ship's carpenter...
...but he appeared to have something extra.
He had a streak of ingenuity...
...of the real ability to improvise...
...to make something out of nothing.
And l think this is connected with a strain of perversity, of cussedness.
And here's another paradox: This was the mutineer who'd come good.
Shackleton chose the strongest and most seasoned sailors for the journey.
With the greatest pride, McNish recorded his own inclusion in the 6-man crew.
He would be joined by Tom Crean and Tim McCarthy...
...both Irish sailors and stalwarts of the voyage to Elephant Island.
The demoted boatswain John Vincent was also redeemed.
Shackleton recognized his strength and skill...
...the result of years on trawlers in the brutal conditions of the North Atlantic.
Captain Frank Worsley had navigated the boats to Elephant Island.
Now he would have to find a tiny speck of land in a limitless ocean.
Pacing the shore, he checked and rechecked the chronometer...
...that would be critical to his navigation.
Frank Wild, Shackleton's right-hand, would be in charge of those left behind.
As the expedition was split for the first time...
... Wild's unenviable commission was the care of 2 1...
...demoralized, partially incapacitated men on a deserted, wind-raked island.
On April 22, 1 9 1 6, McNish finished his work and the weather cleared.
Moored offshore, the Caird was loaded with 2 tons of stone ballast...
...for stability in the towering waves.
Water from ice laboriously melted over a blubber flame was stored in kegs.
They took food for four weeks.
Beyond this they knew they could not survive.
Standing on the beach, Hurley captured the moment of departure...
...as the men left behind bravely cheered the Caird on her way.
On board the Caird, Worsley reflected:
The men ashore formed a pathetic group.
As long as they thought we could see them...
...they kept up a wonderful appearance of optimism and heartiness.
Elephant Island receded into the distance...
...as the Caird departed on a day of rare sunshine and calm seas.
Soon the Caird was in rougher waters.
By the second day, the weather had grown severe...
...and water began pouring into the little boat.
Frank Worsley recalled:
Bruised and soaked with never a long enough interval...
...for our bodies to warm our steaming clothes...
...our feet and legs had swelled and began to be frostbitten...
...with the temperature at times nearly down to zero.
McNish alone attempted to keep a sea log...
...but on the ninth day, he abruptly broke it off.
They worked round the clock in four-hour shifts...
...three men vainly attempting to sleep on the rocky ballast below...
...while three others held watch above, bailing, pumping...
...trimming the sails, fighting to keep the Caird afloat.
They were in a 22-foot-6 little rowing boat.
And it is absolutely staggering, the height of the waves.
There were some incredible waves...
...which might nowadays be called non-negotiable waves...
...where you'd head up to the top...
...and not get over the top and you'd slide back down.
So it was an extraordinary journey of survival.
In the end, everything depended on Worsley.
He had learned to navigate in the high surf of the South Pacific...
...but nothing could compare to his present challenge.
To chart the Caird's position...
... Worsley needed to read the sun's relation to the horizon.
But the sun rarely appeared in the overcast sky...
...and the horizon became almost impossible to find behind the waves.
Even to attempt a sextant reading, he had to be braced by men on either side...
...as the boat heaved and pitched her way through the water.
You mustn't forget, every degree mistake you make...
...is 60 miles of latitude.
And they only had about 1 0 miles leeway...
...in 800 miles in order to reach safety.
In 800 miles of stormy travel...
... Worsley was able to take only four sightings.
The remainder of the journey he navigated by dead reckoning...
...the experienced sailor's instinctive gauging of speed and direction...
...or ''merry guesswork, '' as he called it.
On the 1 0th day, Worsley believed that they were a little over halfway.
He recalled:
Two of the party were very close to death.
Shackleton kept a finger on each man's pulse.
Whenever he noticed that a man seemed extra cold and shivered...
...he would immediately order another hot drink to be prepared and served to all.
He never let the man know that it was on his account.
Vincent's upper lip was torn away by a frozen metal cup.
Oh, God, it must have been desperate.
That's all-- Itmust have been desperate.
My father's ears, his two ears, suffered frostbite.
They were like bones.
On the evening of May 7, the 1 4th day at sea...
...a piece of kelp floated by.
Land was near.
Worsley recalled this moment:
We looked at each other with cheerful, foolish grins.
The thoughts uppermost were, ''We've done it!''
With land in sight, new ordeals arose to test their limits.
A wind drove them perilously close to the island's cliffs.
Soon this wind increased into hurricane force...
...descending upon them from the darkening skies.
This is where Worsley came into his own...
...because he understood the way a sailing ship worked...
...and so he performed a miracle with a round-bottomed whaler...
...whose profession was making leeway, not built for sailing into the wind.
Somehow he clawed his way offshore and into the wind.
The hurricane raged for nine hours.
Then the wind veered, carrying them from destruction.
Shackleton recorded:
We stood offshore, tired almost to the point of apathy.
On the evening of May 1 0, the 1 7 th day at sea...
...the James Caird sailed into the entrance of King Haakon Bay...
...on South Georgia.
In the gathering darkness, the boat ran in on a swell and touched the beach.
A small stream flowed nearby and the men fell to their knees and drank.
One of the greatest boat journeys in modern maritime history had ended.
Above them, the hill was green with tussock grass...
...the first vegetation they had seen in 1 7 months.
McNish recalled:
l went on top of the hill and had a lay on the grass...
...and it put me in mind of old times at home...
...sitting on the hillside looking down at the sea.
Suddenly home, rescue, seemed possible.
There was only one catch.
The whaling stations lay on the opposite side of the island.
Neither crew nor boat were fit for another sea journey.
The island would have to be crossed on foot.
Itwas a terrible setback.
l think that most men...
...under those circumstances, without Shackleton's leadership...
...they might've collapsed morally there and therefore not survived.
He took it all in a very matter-of-fact way.
He gave the impression that everything would be all right in the end.
Their single map showed only the island's coastline.
The interior was unknown.
Icy and forbidding, prey to sudden blizzards and hurricane-force winds...
...the whalers considered it impenetrable.
This chaos of peaks and glaciers had never been crossed.
They had just survived 1 7 days at sea...
...and their feet were still numb from frostbite.
But if rescue were to be made, they had to reach the other side.
Shackleton decided to take with him Crean and Worsley...
...leaving behind the other men who were not fit for the journey.
Using screws from the Caird, McNish improvised climbing boots.
The frost of night would harden the snow, making it easier to cross.
But there could be no stopping, or they would succumb to the cold.
They were in a race for their companions' lives.
Too weak to carry anything but bare necessities...
...the three men took a length of rope...
...and a carpenter's adz as their only equipment.
Taking advantage of the full moon and calm weather...
...they set out at 3 a.m. for Stromness Whaling Station.
Beneath the deceptive blanketing of snow lay ice fields pitted with crevasses.
One misstep could end in death.
As the day grew longer...
...they struggled through a bewildering confusion of ridges and plateaus.
Time after time they would ascend a summit...
...only to find a precipice on the other side.
Shackleton recalled:
We were now feeling the strain of the unaccustomed marching.
We had done little walking since January and our muscles were out of tune.
By evening, they were again high on a treacherous pass...
...too steep to climb down.
Itwas of the utmost importance for us to get down into the next valley before dark.
The night temperature at that elevation would be very low.
We had no sleeping bags.
Worsley recorded:
Shackleton said, ''We've got to take a risk.
Are you game? We'll slide.''
Coiling their rope into a pad, they sat down...
...then pushed off, not knowing what rocks or razor-sharp ice lay in their path.
We seemed to shoot into space.
Quite suddenly l felt a glow and knew that l was grinning.
We finished up at the bottom in a bank of snow.
We picked ourselves up and solemnly shook hands all round.
All night into early morning, they marched on.
Wrote Shackleton:
At 5 a.m., we were at the foot of the rocky spurs of the range.
We were tired and wind that blew down from the heights was chilling us.
l thought we might be able to keep warm and have a rest.
Within minutes, my two companions were asleep.
l realized it would be disastrous if we all slumbered together...
...for sleep under such conditions merges into death.
After five minutes l shook them into consciousness again...
...told them that they'd slept for half an hour...
...and gave the word for a fresh start.
By 6:30 a.m., they had climbed a ridge...
...that looked down upon a site familiar from a year and a half earlier:
Fortuna Bay.
Stromness was around the corner.
At 3 in the afternoon on May 20...
...Shackleton, Worsley and Crean stumbled into Stromness Station.
They had been marching for 36 hours.
At the home of Thoralf Sørlle, the station manager...
...they knocked on the door.
''Who the hell are you?'' Sørlle reportedly asked.
''My name is Shackleton, '' came the answer.
The whaling manager couldn't recognize them because they were dirty, emaciated.
They were soot-grimed because of living over blubber stoves for so long.
Their clothes were filthy. Their hair was uncut.
They were like men returning from the dead.
That night the weather turned.
Lying in bed in the manager's house...
...Shackleton listened to snow drive against the window.
Had they been caught in a blizzard, nothing could have saved them.
Years later, Shackleton would give a mystical account...
...of the crossing of South Georgia.
l know that during that long and racking march of 36 hours...
...over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia...
...it seemed to me often that we were four, not three.
l said nothing to my companions, but afterwards Worsley said to me:
''Boss, l had a curious feeling that there was another person with us.''
The fourth man, l suppose, was the man above.
They must have been deeply religious at the back of everything.
They must.
Three days after arriving in Stromness...
...Shackleton, Worsley and Crean set out for Elephant Island in a borrowed ship.
Their three companions back at King Haakon Bay were given passages home.
60 miles short of the island...
...the rescue ship was brought to a halt by their old enemy:
Ice.
There was nothing to do but return.
Over the next four months, Shackleton made increasingly frantic attempts...
...to get through to his men on Elephant Island.
At last, in late August...
...the Chilean government loaned him a small tug called the Yelcho...
...and Shackleton, Worsley and Crean set out on their fourth rescue attempt.
Elephant Island.
The rescue party was now at least 1 0 weeks overdue.
In his diary, Orde-Lees wrote:
August 26, 1 91 6.
Another wretched day, very dull and draining.
What little seal meat we have left is tainted.
We've picked it over so often...
...that nothing but the most decomposed remains.
The 22 men had passed a sunless winter...
...living in a small hut made from the overturned boats.
Twenty-two of us lived in a tiny, dark little hut.
The weather was just appalling.
Blizzards and snowstorms almost the whole time.
The great difficulty, of course, was lack of water.
There was frozen water all round...
...but you can't suck ice at those temperatures.
Itblisters your lips and your tongue...
...as though you'd sucked a piece of hot iron.
So we'd take a few chips of ice...
...in our sleeping bags with us at night in a tobacco tin.
And if you lay very still, a few of the chips would melt...
...and you'd have a spoonful of water for breakfast in the morning.
Food was very short.
We had little except a little seal and penguin whenever they came up...
...and Marston had a little cookery book, from which he'd read one recipe a night.
We all lay around very quietly and very solemnly...
...suggesting, in turns, improvements and alterations...
...and when the last man finished...
...we dreamt of the second helpings we'd refuse when we were back home.
lt's difficult to realize how hungry a man can be.
When we'd eaten our rations...
...and such seals and penguins as we could catch...
...then and then...
...without any enmity, we looked at one another.
Each day Wild roused the company from their bags with the cry:
''Lash up and stow! The Boss may come today!''
But by the end of August, even Wild had given up hope...
...that Shackleton would return.
Orde-Lees summarized the situation:
The idea of a ship ever coming now is getting more and more remote...
...as preparations are being pushed along for sending one of our two boats.
Wild and four other members are to go in the Dudley Docker...
...and will make their way from island to island of the South Shetlands...
...until they reach Deception lsland...
...about 250 miles away.
Itis a big undertaking.
On August 30, 1 9 1 6...
...the men were gathered in their hut for a lunch of boiled seal backbone.
Marston and Hurley remained outside shelling limpets picked in the shallows.
Suddenly, Marston put his head inside the hut.
Macklin recalled:
Marston burst in asking if it would not be a good thing to send up smoke.
Wild called out to know what was the matter.
Marston replied with the magic words:
''A ship!''
From the deck of the Yelcho, Shackleton scanned Cape Wild through binoculars...
...counting the figures who poured out of the hut onto the beach.
Frank Worsley recalled:
Two, five, seven, and then an exultant shout:
''They're all there, skipper. They're all safe!''
Crean joined us...
...and we were all unable to speak.
All hands were safe. Not one life had been lost.
An ecstatic welcome greeted Shackleton in Punta Arenas.
Although Germany was at war with Britain...
...the German community raised flags of celebration.
The crew of the Endurance returned to a British nation...
...that little resembled the one they had left two years before.
When Shackleton and his men had left England...
...the Great War had just started...
...and their minds were still in Edwardian England.
When they returned to civilization now, they entered the modern world...
...and the war, as it turned out, was beyond their comprehension.
And because of the dreadful carnage on the battlefields in Europe...
...Shackleton rather disappeared.
And in any case, he was the wrong kind of hero for England at the time.
The British wanted dead heroes...
...and they had lots and lots of dead heroes.
l suspect in 1 91 8...
...the death of so many people in the trenches in the war...
...made them feel that they had been...
...l could've said, nearly cowards.
That they avoided two years of the war and they were lucky to be alive.
Most of the men entered the war upon their return.
Frank Hurley went off to photograph the fighting in the trenches.
Tim McCarthy would be killed at sea six weeks after enlisting.
McNish emigrated to New Zealand...
...working on the docks before suffering a crippling injury.
Most members of the expedition were awarded the Polar Medal...
...but Shackleton withheld this honor from McNish and three others.
The carpenter's brief rebellion on the ice had cost him dearly.
As Shackleton had known...
...the Endurance expedition had been his last chance at glory.
In 1 92 1, he headed south once more...
...joined by a handful of the old Endurance crew:
Worsley, Macklin, Green, Hussey and Frank Wild.
The goal of the expedition was unclear.
All that mattered was that they were heading south again.
On the evening of his arrival in South Georgia...
...Shackleton had a heart attack and died.
He was not quite 48 years old.
At the request of his wife...
...his men buried him in the island's small whaling cemetery.
Bereft, Shackleton's men continued their uncertain expedition.
Along the way, they took time to visit a place they never thought to see again:
Elephant Island.
The expedition photographer recorded their visit.
Confronting the site of their dark winter...
...they were overcome with unexpected nostalgia.
Macklin:
We have stood gazing with binoculars...
...picking out and recognizing old familiar spots.
What memories, what memories!
They rush to one like a great flood and bring tears to one's eyes.
As l sit and try to write, a great rush of feeling comes over me...
...and l find l cannot express myself.
Once more, l see the old faces and hear the old voices.
Old friends scattered everywhere.
But to express it all, l feel, is impossible.
Shackleton's feeling about the Endurance expedition...
...was expressed in his memoir:
''We had seen God in his splendors...
...heard the text that nature renders.
We had reached the naked soul of man. ''