The expedition fails before it even begins. Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton (1874–1922), who died on January 5th 100 years ago, wanted to be the first to cross Antarctica over a length of 2900 kilometers with 27 men in 1914. But the group doesn’t even reach the Antarctic coast. The ship “Endurance” gets stuck in the pack ice of the Weddell Sea.
After eight months it is crushed by huge ice floes. The crew saved themselves on the ice with the bare essentials and three rowing boats. Everyone is allowed to take a maximum of two pounds of belongings.
“The biting cold of the snowstorms penetrated our worn things and covered us with slush. Body heat thawed the soft snow under our sleeping bags and everything got wet. When the temperature dropped again, clothes and sleeping bags were frozen as hard as stone, ”says photographer Frank Hurley. The only food for the men is seals and penguins, supplemented by crumbs of emergency provisions. At night the orcas can be heard blowing in water holes.
Born in Ireland and raised in London, Shackleton became a captain at the age of 24. He was drawn to the last undiscovered continent. From 1907 to 1909 he led an expedition to the Antarctic and came closer to the South Pole than any human before. But he turned back shortly before the goal – the survival of his team was more important to him.
Months on the ice floe
Five years later he set off again. On August 8, 1914, the “Endurance” set sail from England for Antarctica. It freezes in the ice on February 24, 1915, and sinks on October 26. The crew, stranded on the ice, set up tents and make a stove out of oil barrels. Hunger is omnipresent, little by little the men are eating the sled dogs. Five and a half months after the ship’s sinking, the ice floe that had drifted north breaks apart, and the men escape into the three rowing boats. Her hope: to reach one of the two rocky islands around 90 kilometers away.
“The spray that splashed over us froze and covered men and boats with ice, while the salt water soaked our clothes and made our chilblains ache worse,” wrote photographer Hurley. At night they sleep on ice floes, orcas plow through the water. They have run out of drinking water for the past two days. On April 15, 2016, they finally reached Elephant Island, a storm-tossed, deserted mountain island covered in ice and snow.
Shackleton is clear: the only hope is to track down the island of South Georgia, 1,300 kilometers away in the stormy South Atlantic, and to get help. He chooses five companions and nine days later dares the crazy journey in a seven and a half meter boat.
In the hurricanes, the boat is carried like a nutshell up the waves as high as a house and thrown down. “It was impossible to rest,” Shackleton later recalled, “we were cold, sore, uncomfortable”. Shackleton initially misinterpreted the head of a giant wave as a crack in the clouds. They have to throw frozen sleeping bags and icy oars overboard, only two oars remain. The drinking water is running out. But they create the miracle of navigation: after 16 days, shortly before dying of thirst, they find a gap through the cliffs of South Georgia on May 10th.
Dramatic rescue
Whaling stations are on the other side of the island, with a snow- and ice-covered mountain range in between, with no path or footbridge. Shackleton chooses two companions, they leave the sleeping bags behind. You begin a forced march over the mountains and glaciers, through fog, through the day and night. After 36 hours, the three men reached their destination with the last of their strength. “We had broken through the veil of external things. We suffered, starved and triumphed, ”writes Shackleton of the moment. “We had seen God in his glory.”
A ship fetches the three companions who have stayed behind. Shackleton immediately tries to organize the rescue of the other 22 men of his crew on Elephant Island. Three attempts in the following months fail. On the fourth attempt, the weather is on their side: on August 30, 1916, the steamer Yelcho rescues those who stayed behind after waiting four and a half months in the arctic winter under two overturned rowing boats.
More than two years after leaving England, the team arrives at the southern tip of Chile. The whole city is on its feet there, as Hurley notes: “Our reception in Punta Arenas was more than just a welcome party – it was a triumph that never wanted to end.” But the superhuman efforts are taking their toll. After Shackleton set off again on an expedition to Antarctica in September 1921, he died of heart failure in South Georgia in 1922, at the age of 47. It was not until 1957/58 that a Commonwealth expedition succeeded in crossing Antarctica using completely different technical means on a route similar to that planned by Shackleton. Arved Fuchs and Reinhold Messner only crossed Antarctica on foot and on skis in 1989/90.
Shackleton’s adventurous expedition still stimulates the imagination of researchers today. The British marine archaeologist Mensun Bound plans to venture into pack ice with a research ship in early 2022. He hopes to track down the “Endurance” lying on the seabed at a depth of 3000 meters. Jens Bayer-Gimm, epd
