Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World: The Extraordinary True Story of Shackleton and the Endurance

The crew surveys the scene, which consists of a massive field of ice surrounding their broken ship. The begin gathering together everything on the ship in a pile they call “Dump Camp.” They pitch tents to get some sleep and are forced to draw straws for the 18 sleeping bags. Shackleton’s goal is to find land, although his options are limited. He decides they will walk over the ice to Paulet Island, which is 346 miles northwest. His goal is to get the crew there intact, along with two of the lifeboats since they will eventually need to sail on water. He decides they will rest for a few days and leave on October 30.

They have many preparations to make for their departure. They have to kill Mrs. Chippy and the puppies because they are at risk. They also have to decide which items are essential, as they are given a limit of two pounds each for personal affects. Shackleton gives them permission to keep diaries, tobacco, and medical supplies for the doctors. Almost everything else is discarded, including clothes, razors, games, equipment, lanterns, and silverware. Leonard Hussey is allowed to take his banjo as Shackleton believes “they would need the comfort of music in the hard months ahead” (52).

They set out in the afternoon on October 30. The route ahead is treacherous. Shackleton takes the lead with a few other men and tools to help them hack through the ice. The dog teams are behind them with sleds carrying “900 pounds of stores and gear” (52). In the rear are the rest of the crew hauling the fully stocked lifeboats, which each weigh over a ton and sit on sledge runners. Fifteen men lug one boat at a time for a quarter of a mile before resting. Shackleton worries the ice might crack, creating a rift between teams, so he keeps everything close together. After two hours they have only moved a mile.

After stopping to eat and sleep for the night, they continue on the next day. It had snowed overnight, and after three hours they have gone less than a mile. Since they are on a large, flat floe, Shackleton decides they should camp there for the night. The next day, he announces they are going to stay put and let the ice pack they are on carry them north towards Paulet Island as it drifts. He also tells Green to add more blubber to the food since they will need the valuable calories to “keep them from freezing” (54). 

The crew names the new camp “Ocean Camp.” Once it’s established they will stay there, they return to Dump Camp several times to gather as much as they possibly can and bring it back. They bring back the third lifeboat, numerous personal belongings, and “more than three tons of food” (55). Two of the men go into the flooded cabins of Endurance and retrieve several hundred of Hurley’s photographic plates. Hurley and Shackleton pick out 150 to keep, also saving a small pocket camera, along with a few rolls of film so Hurley can take more pictures of the rest of the trip. Along with being a photographer, Hurley is also a metalworker and makes two camp stoves. The carpenter, Harry McNeish, builds a galley and installs one of the stoves inside.

The ice pack makes steady progress, moving north three miles each day. They simply have to wait out the situation as they did on the ship, only with far less comfort and distraction. On November 6, they endure a blizzard even though the Antarctic summer is in full swing. On November 12, warmer weather allows the men to use the snow to bathe themselves. Cleanliness and privacy are understood as luxuries in such conditions. The living conditions are crowded and difficult, with only five tents for 28 men and a constantly wet ground beneath them. If the snow melts too much, they end up waist-deep in water. They find creative ways to hang their belongings to dry.

Spirits remain reasonably high among the crew with the sun shining nearly all day and the ice pack continuing to steadily drift north. Frank Worsley, the captain of Endurance, regularly examines his navigational charts to determine the various islands where they can make landfall. One possibility is South Georgia Island, where they last stayed at the whaling station. Each day he determines their distance traveled on the ice pack, which sometimes takes them in the wrong direction. Other times, however, “it was a heartening run dead north” (59).

As they float along, the crew stays busy. McNeish spends his time making sure the lifeboats are ready for open water. The others hunt seals and penguins for food. Although tempers sometimes flair due to the confined living situation, Shackleton finds ways to help them get along. He moves them around in their tents and makes sure they always understand cooperation is crucial to their survival. On November 21, they watch as the last of Endurance sinks beneath the ice. Many of them feel sadness as their ship is finally gone. They are now “utterly alone on the sea of ice” (59).

On December 1, Shackleton moves the camp 50 yards away to an area where the ice is firmer. With the warmer weather, their floe has been shrinking and breaking apart. The direction of their floe has also shifted east, which is not the direction they want to be going. It would get them to open water but not land. On December 21, Shackleton decides they must abandon the new camp and begin walking west across the ice. They celebrate Christmas on the 22nd, eating as much as they can before they head out the next day for the “backbreaking haul” to Paulet Island. 

Shackleton hopes that the trek west will spur some optimism among the men. He and the crew are familiar with the stories of similar expeditions that went badly. In particular, they know of Sir John Franklin’s “doomed search for the Northwest Passage” between the North Atlantic and Pacific in 1845 (62). Franklin’s Navy ships, Erebus and Terror, were never found, and records of the journey discovered later in Canada hinted at “[m]utiny, insanity, desertion, cannibalism” (62). Shackleton and the crew know the many possible dangers, and it is important to keep everyone in positive spirits.

However, Shackleton observes that certain members of the crew are becoming increasingly disgruntled. Some of the ship’s workers, known as the “fo’c’sle hands,” are upset that they are now working without compensation since the Endurance went down. They are helping lug two of the lifeboats, known as James Caird and Dudley Docker, through freezing conditions a quarter mile at a time. Although they do it at night when the ice is firmer, the work is still slow and difficult. After three days, they have only gone seven miles. On top of that, Worsley wants to go back for the third boat, Stancomb Wills, which they left behind at Ocean Camp. He knows two will not be enough for the entire crew.

On December 27, Shackleton finds the men pulling the boats have stopped working. Worsley is arguing with McNeish, who is refusing to do anything. McNeish knows that under naval law, he “is free of obligation when the ship sinks” (63). When the naval duties stop, so does the pay. Although no one is openly siding with McNeish, Shackleton knows that others have been upset about the situation. He retrieves the Ship’s Articles—the documents governing the contract between sailors and captain—and reads them. They include following Shackleton’s orders “whether on board, in boats, or on shore” (64). Since they are technically on shore, the crew is obliged to do as Shackleton commands and will still receive pay. Shackleton can also still legally discipline his crew for insubordination. Shackleton pulls McNeish aside and talks with him, “perhaps reminding him that execution was a legal punishment for mutiny” (64). McNeish then gets back to work.

Although they keep pulling the boats west, the path ahead becomes increasingly treacherous. After working through the night, they go back to their old floe but find it unstable. They can go neither forward nor back to Ocean Camp. They move a short distance a couple of times, finally deciding to make a new camp that is much less secure than Ocean Camp. They have even less supplies and equipment with them and seem to be stuck there. They decide to call the new camp “Patience Camp.” 

On one of the first days at the new camp, a crewmember named Orde-Lees is nearly attacked by a leopard seal. Frank Wild quickly comes out of a tent with his gun and shoots the seal. It is an indication of how life at Patience Camp is even harder than at Ocean Camp. Their supplies are more limited, and the ice is so soft they have to crawl to move around. Despite the seal attack, it becomes harder to find animals to hunt. On January 13, Shackleton orders for most of the sled dogs to be killed since they require more food than can be supplied. Three of the dog teams are kept alive so they can make trips back to Ocean Camp to gather supplies.

On January 15, a gale with strong winds of over 75 miles per hour blows in, pushing the ice pack north for six days. Worsley calculates that they are across the Antarctic Circle, which the men celebrate with “an extra round of hot Virol, a powdered drink mix” (66). Worsley continues to pressure Shackleton about getting the third boat, which Shackleton finally agrees to do at the end of the month. A team of 18 men headed by Wild heads out on February 1, gathers what they can at Ocean Camp, including Stancomb Wills, and returns to Patience Camp. They kill the remaining sled dogs save for one team.

Their return to Patience Camp ushers in a long wait as they continue to drift north. The men suffer from the cold and lack of proper hygiene. They try to exercise and hunt for seals and penguins when the ice is firm enough. They try to break up the monotony of the day with regular mealtimes but refer to their “forced imprisonment” as “The Ice Age” (69). Shackleton also teaches the crew how to play bridge. He has regular nightmares but tries to remain calm and cheerful in front of the crew.

The days become shorter, and the blubber supply dwindles, forcing Shackleton to limit warm drinks to once per day. On February 20, a giant flock of migrating Adélie penguins shows up on their floe, and they are able to catch more than 600 for food. However, they continue to worry about reaching water before the floe disintegrates. On March 9, they finally feel “the swell of the ocean slowly lift the ice under their feet” (71). They are 30 miles from open water.  

The chapter opens by explaining how the crew is able to track their exact location before the use of radio signals, radar, and satellites. The officers and crew use maps, as well as “a few basic instruments, some almanacs, and math” (73). They rely on lines of latitude and longitude and the path of celestial bodies like the sun and planets to track their position. One of the most important instruments for tracking longitude is the chronometer, which, along with a measuring instrument called a sextant, a compass, and nautical tables, has allowed Worsley to “calculate and plot their every position” (73). He no longer has his large chronometers, which are back at Dump Camp, but he constantly checks the accuracy of his pocket chronometers. The crew understands that Worsley’s instruments are crucial for getting them to safety.

After the crew feels the initial ocean swell, the ice pack closes in tightly again. The weather gets worse with winter coming. They remain prepared for open water, but initially it fails to materialize. On March 27 they helplessly float past the entrance to Erebus and Terror Gulf, where the Danger Islands are located. Even though its only 57 miles away, they have no way to get there. They continue to prepare for the next phase of their journey by making repairs and keeping watch for open water. As the blubber supply diminishes, they are limited to one hot meal a day. At one point they are nearly bulldozed by an approaching iceberg, but at the last minute it drifts by them to the east.

Through March, the weather grows worse. The men are “hungry, cold, and frightened” and prone to arguing with each other or crying (15). Shackleton tries to stay positive, but it becomes difficult. On March 28, the floe breaks apart, and they must implement emergency protocols. They round up the dogs, put away the camp, and get the lifeboats out of the ice. The floe cracks again beneath the James Caird, and they must go through another round of gathering everything together. As they are finishing another cold meal, a leopard seal comes across the ice. Wild kills it, and they find undigested fish inside of it. Shackleton declares a holiday feast as they now have “1,000 pounds of meat and at least two weeks’ worth of blubber” (75). Although they now have more food, the rest of the sled dogs need to be killed and are used for food. They talk about how good the dog meat tastes, and Hurley writes that hunger had reduced them “to the level of other species” (76).

Above them, the crew begins to see birds, which indicates that they are near open water. One of the crew members also spots jellyfish, which is also taken as a sign. They keep a close watch, rotating in shifts of four hours and remaining fully dressed at all times. Some become seasick as the floe bobs up and down with the ocean swell. Shackleton determines that for the best chance of surviving, they need to land on Clarence or Elephant Island, which are to the northwest at the end of the Antarctic Peninsula. Their floe is dwindling in size, and it is now dark for 12 hours a day. On April 8, with their floe down to 50 yards across, they hit open water, and Shackleton gives the order to launch the lifeboats. 

The three boats—James Caird, Dudley Docker, and Stancomb Wills—are launched with thousands of birds circling overhead. Since the sides of the boats are raised high to protect the crew, the rowers must sit on crates to row. The process is awkward, and they “fumbled and cursed as they tried to find a rhythm” (78). It is bitter cold, and they are constantly bombarded by water from the swell that hits the icebergs. They also have to be careful not to hit the chunks of ice that litter the water surrounding them.

In front is the biggest boat, the James Caird, which contains Shackleton, Wild, and 10 others. The Dudley Docker is second, with Worsley at the helm and eight of the men. Last is the Stancomb Wills holding Crean and six others. Initially, they make strong progress, getting a mile away from Patience Camp in under an hour, but soon comes a “thick flow of ice on a riptide current” (78). The men row furiously to escape the ice charging after them, which disappears suddenly, leaving the rowers exhausted. Those who were not rowing take the place of the tired rowers, and they continue on steadily through the rest of the afternoon.  

As it begins to get dark, Shackleton looks for a place to camp for the night. He finds a floe with a crabeater seal on it that they kill and eat for dinner. The camp spot seems solid, but Shackleton wakes up uneasy while the other men are sleeping. As he walks across the floe, it cracks in half, stretching a tent where some of the men sleep and plunging one of them—Ernest Holness—into the water. Shackleton is able to grab Holness, who is still in his sleeping bag, out of the water, and the crew tries to pull the two pieces of the floe back together using a rope. They move the James Caird to the larger piece of ice, and all the men jump over except Shackleton. He has stayed on the smaller piece to make sure everyone is safe when it suddenly begins to drift away, and the crew are unable to pull it back. The crew launches the Stancomb Wills to rescue Shackleton, who has “drifted out of sight into the darkness” (80).  

Once they retrieve Shackleton, they try to warm up Holness. The crew stays by the fire for the night instead of going back to the tents. They eat seal steaks every two hours for strength, and Worsley feels the men have a renewed sense optimism due to the dangers they are now facing and working to overcome. In the early morning, they set out again in the boats, and Worsley estimates that they are not far from Clarence and Elephant islands. At first, they are rowing with the ice pack, but before noon they reach open water and raise the sail. The celebrating is brief, however, as the boats are too heavy to continue. They have to go back to the pack. They dump a week’s worth of food to lighten the boats and proceed to eat, according to Worsley, “the best and largest meal” in five months (81).