Shackleton's Endurance and Elephant Island

The Drake Passage is notorious for rough seas, so as we cruised from the Falkland Islands, we braced for the worst storms imaginable.

As it turned out, seas were remarkably calm.  Jovial Captain Todd McBain announced that over the public address system and other experts repeated similar phrasing frequently throughout our voyage.  As a result, we had no trouble enjoying the great enrichment lectures about Antarctica and its history during days at sea.

While the existence of a continent by the South Pole was theorized by Aristotle, and Captain Cook had a near-miss during his explorations, Antarctica wasn't actually discovered until 1820.

At the turn of the next century, the "Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration" began in earnest.

The man whose name now seems most revered from that era is Ernest Shackleton, who is referenced by every expedition cruise to Antarctica.

Shackleton earned that renown by virtue of his heroic actions when his ship was trapped in ice and crushed during the ill-fated "Endurance Expedition."

On January 15, 1915, after months in Antarctic waters, Endurance became stuck in an ice floe.  By February 24, Shackleton realized there was no hope of a warm spell melting the frozen embrace of his ship and converted the vessel into a winter camp.



The ever-optimistic Shackleton kept his expedition's spirits up with soccer games and other activities as the long winter wore on.  Penguins were easy prey, and as they liked to say, tasted a lot better when the alternative was starving.

Shackleton held his men organized and managed to keep them from acting desperately despite dire conditions, just hoping to make it through to the next spring alive.

In September, however, the melting ice had an unanticipated result, compressing the ice floes around the ship together.  On October 24, the crushed hull sprang a leak, and water began flowing in.

On November 21, 1915, Endurance sank.

The men set up camp on a large, flat ice floe, eventually switching to a marginally better ice floe where they established "Patience Camp."

Their hopeful theory was that the current would take them to Paulet Island, about 400 kilometers away, where provisions were stored.

After two months, they made it to within 100 kilometers of their goal, but with no method to get across the gap filled with colliding ice blocks, they floated on past.

On April 19, 1916, the situation became even worse when the ice floe they rode became unstable and split in two.  Shackleton ordered the men board and launch their three lifeboats.

With giant waves and no modern GPS, it was nearly impossible to keep track of direction as the small boats bounced across the freezing, stormy waters for five days.

Against all odds, the lifeboats made it to Elephant Island, which was named by Captain George Powell, who spotted giant Elephant Seals there in 1821.

When they went ashore, it was the first time they'd been on land in 497 days.

Having spent a harrowing day at sea ourselves, listening to enrichment lectures and live music as well as enjoying meals, snacks and happy hour in the comforts of our cruise ship, we were excited when we looked up from our delicious feast in the dining room to see a snow frosted island on the horizon outside the window.  I guess it wasn't quite the same excitement as Shackleton and his men felt after 497 days in freezing conditions, but it was a lovely view well worth delaying our dessert to take some photos.


Back to history, that still wasn't the end of the ordeal for the Endurance Expedition, because Elephant Island was and still remains nothing but a deserted island without provisions.

Knowing they couldn't survive there indefinitely, Shackleton ordered immediate reinforcing of the sturdiest boat and set off ten days later, on April 24, 1916, with five  carefully-selected, sturdy companions for South Georgia Island, 720 nautical miles away.


In what is widely considered one of the greatest navigational fetes in history, the ship's captain Frank Worsley managed to stay on course despite gigantic waves that made it seemingly impossible to know which direction was up, much less where they were on a chart.

After 15 days, they could see South Georgia, but hurricane force freezing storms kept them from going ashore.

They finally made land, but they still needed to get to the other side of the island, which was another harrowing adventure, this time over rugged, frozen mountains.

Once at the outpost on the far side of the island, winter conditions nonetheless meant the rescue of the Endurance crew left on Elephant Island needed to wait until spring.

Shackleton pleaded for assistance, and the government of Chile offered the tugboat Yelcho and her crew.  On August 13, 1916, Shackleton personally arrived to rescue his 22 men who had been stranded for four and a half months on Elephant Island.

From there, Yelcho took the crew of Endurance to Punta Arenas, Chile, which we would visit after cruising Antarctica and circumnavigating Cape Horn.  There's a museum dedicated to Endurance you can visit in Punta Arenas, if you wish to see artifacts from the voyage.