Pressure, Page 39 - 47

PRESSURE 
from July 14 through 16, a blizzard pounded the ship with gale force winds. As the tem­perature dropped to thirty-four degrees below zero, the Boss ordered the team dri­vers to feed their dogs half a pound of lard each to keep them from freezing-and no man was allowed to leave Endurance except to go to Dog Town, where wires were rigged up so the men could grope their way back to the safety of the ship. On board the men huddled around the stove with their books and their pipes, listen­ing to the wind howl through the stays and yardarms, and hearing the unmistak­able creak of the ship's timbers as ice pressed against the sides of the ship. Shackleton confided in his diary, "It would be a relief to be able to make some effort on our own behalf; but we can do nothing until the ice releases our ship. In the meantime the pressure continues, and it is hard to foresee the outcome." 

For the first time, Shackleton began to voice his doubts about the future of the expedition. In the privacy of his cabin, he and Worsley discussed their dilemma. 

"If the Endurance does have to, well, get left behind, we will manage, some­how," Worsley said, listening to the howling of the gales outside. 

"We shall hang on as long as we can," the Boss replied. "It is hard enough on the men as it is. Without a ship in which to shelter from these blizzards, and in this continuous cold-" He broke off to pace the cabin, and nothing more was said for a time. The wind shrieked again, and the light flickered in a draft. 

When the blizzard subsided, a scene of destruction stretched from one ice­white horizon to the other. What had once been a fairly smooth plain was now broken and fractured. Enormous slabs of ice jutted out of the pack at all angles. The wind howled around each mound and hillock and floe, piling up enormous drifts of snow. The garbage dumps had been blown clear of snow and stood out stark and ugly against the white. 

But worse, the jumble of ice that stretched for hundreds of miles in every direction gave the wind a grip on the ice pack. As the winds built up speed across the tumbled floes, the frozen sea began to shift and creak and press against itself On Endurance, the ship's timbers began to complain. Loudly. 

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Hurley's most famous photograph of E11d11ra11ce looks like a negative, but isn't. The ship is completely coated with frost, turning it white, and the winter night is totally black. He rook this photograph on the night of August 27, 1915. It required twenty flashes to secure the image on film. "Half blinded after the successive flashes, I lost my bearings amongst hummocks, bumping shins against all points and stumbling into deep snowdrifts," said Hurley. 

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"Mighty blocks of ice, gripped between meeting floes, rose slowly until they jumped like cherrystones squeezed between thumb and finger," Shackleton wrote. 

"The noise was very loud, like an enormous train with squeaky axles being shunted with much bumping and clattering," added Worsley. 

Day and night, the men listened to their sturdy ship resist the pressure of the ice. On July 26, the men cheered the return of "Old Jamaica," sailors' slang for the sun. Even its brief appearance raised spirits a little, and by August 1 the pressure on the ship's sides relaxed. The men congratulated one another and praised the ship for withstanding the ice. As August passed in peace and quiet, spirits rose even higher: spring was on the way. Soon the ship would be free, and their journey could continue. All the dogs were brought back on board, in case Dog Town was destroyed by the shifting ice. 

But at ten o'clock at night on August 31, the pressure resumed, and the ship began creaking and groaning and trembling like an animal in pain, keeping the men on edge for three days before letting up. September teased them with agoniz­ing on-again, off-again attacks against the ship. Often, it seemed, the pressure 

(One of the weekly "gramophone 
evenings" held in "the Ritz"-the common room of Endurance. )

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coincided with their "gramophone evenings," and some of the more superstitious members of the crew began to think the music caused the pressure. The gramo­phone was banned to save argument. An increase in plankton in the water drawn from the boreholes around the ship-a sure sign of approaching spring--didn't ward off the suspense that all the men now felt. The temperature was rising, the sun was shining longer and longer each day, but Endurance wasn't free yet. 

Worsley noted in his diary on September 22, the first day of the Antarctic spring, "We seem to be utterly abandoned by animal life, and it will be hard with the dogs if we do not get a few penguins soon." The dogs were shedding their winter coats, whining and restless to be off the ship again, and growing hungrier every day. 

The afternoon of September 30 brought an enormous ice floe bearing down on the ship from the port side. The floe, which Worsley estimated at 

(As the wind increased, it gained a grip on the broken ice and began driving it relentlessly against the ship. "All hands is 
standing bye, we had a slight shock last ... there was a noise under the bottom aft the same as if the ice had broken up ... the Boss thinks it was a whale but I thinks 
different," wrote McNeish in his diary. )

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possibly a million tons, pressed so hard against Endurance that her beams began to buckle and her foremast jerked and shook like a cornstalk in the wind. The attack lasted an hour, leaving the men stunned. In a daze they bent to retrieve the objects shaken from their perches-books, tools, charts, pots and pans, boxes of tea and tins of tobacco, microscopes, clocks, and diaries-and gaped at the bent and buckled decks. 

For the next two weeks, the men felt as though they were holding their breath. They hardly dared hope they had seen the last of the pressure attacks. The pack was still drifting steadily northward, carrying Endurance with it. The sun was shining almost around the clock, and the temperature had finally climbed above zero. And then on October 18, a misty, gray day, the ice began pressing in again on both sides of the ship. 

The ship began to rise to the pressure that was squeezing it up and out of 

(The pressure grew stronger, forcing the ship onto its side, when a massive floe rammed against it on October 19, 1915. "We have sprung a leak I am working all night trying to stop it the pressure is getting worse," McNeish wrote. )

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the ice. Suddenly, Endurance rolled over onto the port side, and everything that wasn't nailed down slid, slithered, and crashed against the bulwark. Dogs and men all went head over heels in a mass of howling confusion. Some of the men prepared to jump as the ship leaned onto its side, but Endurance came to rest at an angle of thirty degrees to port. The pressure stopped again, and the Boss ordered the men to restore order to the jumbled ship. The crew ate dinner that night propped up against the decks like men seated in a grandstand, with their plates in their laps. At eight o'clock, the ship suddenly righted itself again and floated free. Endurance had survived another attack. 

The next day, the men studied the narrow lead of open water they found themselves in. A killer whale surfaced beside the ship, its black sides glistening and its white patches tinged a dirty yellow by algae. The animal paraded along­side them for some time before disappearing again. Everything was in readiness for breaking free of the ice. The engines were fired, and sea watches were set as the crew waited for a sizable lead that would take them out of the ice pack. Members of the crew began to talk about the future, of what they would do when they returned home. Reginald James, the physicist, declared that once he got back to Cambridge University he never wanted to see another scrap of ice for the rest of his life. He wasn't the only one to feel that way. 

But no navigable leads formed. Days passed, and still Endurance and her crew waited in readiness. To their dismay the pressure began again on October 24, and it began so strong and so steady that there could be no doubt: the ship was in for it. The crew had seen pressure before, but none of it compared with what they were seeing now. The whole pack, for as far as the eye could see, was churning and heaving and shuddering. Bergs and floes larger than the ship rose up and tumbled over like children's toys. Icebergs plowed through the pack. Dr. Macklin felt he was watching "something colossal, something in nature too big to grasp." 

Endurance was pinned on all sides by this immense upheaval. As floes pressed against her, leaks sprang in the hold. Planks began twisting out of place. Amid the sounds of tortured wood were the howls and whines of the dogs. In the boiler room, the men took turns manning the pumps to keep the water out, but they knew they were toiling for nothing. In a desperate 

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(Endurance slowly but surely being consumed by the ice. McNeish's diary continues: "Endurance is going to pieces fast ... the stern post broke ... and then the keel was torn out of her then she filled rapidly." )

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attempt to keep the pressure off the ship, Shackleton ordered some of the men over the side to hack away at the floes, with the axes, and picks. All night long they rotated in shifts from the pumps, to the axes, and back again. 
And now the Boss directed the lifeboats, equipment, and stores to be trans­ferred onto the ice beside Endurance. In the evening of October 25, a troop of eight emperor penguins waddled out of the fog and stood looking at the embattled ship. They tipped their heads up and began hooting dismally. Although all the men had seen emperor penguins before, none of them had ever heard the birds utter a sound. Now that the emperors were wailing at the ship, it sounded to everyone's ears like a dirge. 

"Do you hear that?" asked Thomas McLeod, one of the sailors. "We' ll none of us get back to our homes again." 

"You won't get home if you stand there gaping!" Wild snapped. "Get the dogs off." 

Shackleton turned away and ordered the men to resume their backbreaking, futile work. "It was a sickening sensation to feel the decks breaking up under one's feet, the great beams bending and then snapping with a noise like heavy gun-fire," he wrote later in his diary. The ship was being crushed like a nut, and Shackleton knew there was nothing he could do to stop it. 

All that night and the next day the pressure continued without letup. The sternpost was ripped away. The keel was sheared off. The decks began to buck­le, and thick beams snapped like twigs. As water rushed forward it weighed down the bow, and the men pumped with every last shred of their failing strength. 

But by five o'clock on October 27, Shackleton told them to stop pumping. It was obvious there was no point in going on. The ship could endure no more. In a calm voice he ordered the men over the side. Wild picked his way carefully over the quaking deck and found William Bakewell and Walter How asleep from exhaustion. He shook them awake. 

"She's going, boys. I think it's time to get off." 

Shackleton had the flag raised one last time on the battered mast, which brought a weary cheer from the men, and then began overseeing the evacuation. "I brought your banjo ashore," Shackleton said to Hussey. "Look after it. 

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We shall need it. Then, as Orde-Lees prepared to abandon the ship, the Boss said to him, "We've got it in the neck all right this time, haven't we?" 

"Well, no," Orde-Lees ventured. "You wouldn't have had anything to write a book about if it hadn't been for this." 

"By Jove, I'm not so sure you aren't right," Shackleton replied, and the two men laughed together. 

We shall need it. Then, as Orde-Lees prepared to abandon the ship, the Boss said to him, "We've got it in the neck all right this time, haven't we?" 

"Well, no," Orde-Lees ventured. "You wouldn't have had anything to write a book about if it hadn't been for this." 

"By Jove, I'm not so sure you aren't right," Shackleton replied, and the two men laughed together. 

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