Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Ernest Shackleton and the Rescue of the Endurance (Encore)

Starting point is 00:00:00 The following is an encore presentation of Everything Everywhere Daily. In 1914, the British Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition set out to become the first to cross the continent of Antarctica by land. They did not achieve their goal. However, in their failure, they ended up becoming one of the greatest stories of perseverance and of the tenacity of the human spirit. Learn more about Ernest Shackleton and the rescue of the endurance on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Starting point is 00:00:42 What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. Ernest Shackleton was one of the great polar explorers in the golden age of polar exploration. Born in 1974 in Ireland, he attended college and served in the British Merchant Marine. He later became a lieutenant in the Royal Navy Reserve in 1901, and that same year he took part in his first polar expedition.

Starting point is 00:01:25 He served as the third lieutenant on the British National Antarctic Expedition under the command of Robert Scott on the RSS Discovery. He took part in the sled dog journey to the South Pole and made it all the way to 82 degrees south before he got sick and was sent back home on a supply ship. He returned to Antarctica in 1907 on the Nimrod Expedition, which was an attempt to become the first humans to reach the South Pole. and his team got close, but didn't quite make it. They got a record by making it to 88 degrees 23 minutes south, just 112 miles or 180 kilometers from the South Pole. A few years later, in 1912, Scott died trying to reach the pole, and Norwegian Roald-Admanson finally made it. For a polar explorer, getting to the South Pole first was the big prize. Now that prize had been won, and Shackleton needed another goal to chase. He decided to be the first person to cross the entirety of

Starting point is 00:02:17 Antarctica. In fact, he decided on this goal almost the moment he heard of Edmondson's success. His plan was to start near the Weddell Sea, east of the Antarctic Peninsula, roughly south of America and South George Island. From there, go to the South Pole, then cross over the Ross Ice shelf and return back via New Zealand. This would be a much greater challenge than just going to the pole and back. For starters, it would require the use of two ships. The first ship, the endurance, would drop off the initial team of six men. ship, the Aurora, would go to the other end of the continent and leave supplies across the Ross Ice Shelf that the team would pick up on their way back. In addition to the complicated

Starting point is 00:02:56 logistics, most of the funds for the expedition had to be privately raised. The British government did donate 10,000 pounds, but the other 70,000 had to be raised from private sources. He also sold the newspaper rights to the story and created the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Film Syndicate to sell the film footage. Most famously, he recruited many of his crew through what would become the most famous classified advertisement in history. The ad read, quote, men wanted for hazardous journey, low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness, safe return, doubtful, honor and recognition in event of success, end quote. The ad was considered one of the greatest 100 ads of all time. There were over 5,000 applications for the expedition, including three women. Eventually,

Starting point is 00:03:42 28 men were selected for each ship at the expedition. The endurance set sail on August 8, 19, 14 without Shackleton, who had to take care of expedition business. He took a faster ship and met up with the endurance in Buenos Aires. Shackleton was the leader of the expedition, but the captain of the endurance was the Kiwi Frank Worsley, and Shackleton's right-hand man and second in command was Frank Wilde, who was an experienced Antarctic explorer himself. There were a total of 28 men on the endurance and 70 sled dogs. One of the 28 men was actually a stowaway who ended up being recruited into service when he was discovered. From Buenos Aires, they sailed to South Georgia Island, which is an island in the South Atlantic and is today a British territory.

Starting point is 00:04:23 At the time, there were several whaling and sealing stations on the island, and that was it. The island has never had a permanent human population. They left South Georgia for Antarctica on December 14th. Two days after leaving South Georgia, they encountered pack ice in the wetter sea. Pack ice is ice that's floating, but you can still sail between it. Imagine jigsaw puzzle pieces that aren't connected. You can push between the pieces, but it's difficult. For weeks, they slowly worked their way south, making very little progress. Eventually, the winds picked up and pushed the ice against the land,

Starting point is 00:04:56 and all of the pack ice was pressed tight against the ship. On January 19, 1915, the endurance became stuck and couldn't move. There was absolutely nothing they could do. As one of the crew members later said, they were, quote, frozen like an almond in the middle of a chocolate bar. They were within a day's sale of where they were supposed to land to begin their expedition when they got stuck. By February 24th, it became obvious that the ship wasn't going to be going to be going anywhere. The southern hemisphere summer was ending and was only going to start getting colder. The ship was stuck until next spring, and they were going to have to spend the winter in Antarctica stuck on a ship which was trapped in ice. There was no hope of rescue, and there was no way

Starting point is 00:05:35 to get the word out to anyone that they needed help. They were stuck in ice for over 10 months. Then in October, the wooden ship started to disintegrate because of the pressure of the ice. word was given to abandoned ship. They took all the supplies off the ship and set up camp on an ice flow. They left everything that wasn't necessary on the ship, including having to kill some of the younger dogs. It was just a matter of time, and on November 15, 1915, the endurance sunk to the bottom of the sea. In addition to supplies necessary for survival, they also took three lifeboats from the ship, which proved to be pivotal later on. They spent several months on the ice flow. The ice flow kept floating north, and they were hoping it would take them to Paulette Island, where they knew

Starting point is 00:06:15 there were supplies stored. However, the ice eventually didn't get close enough, and their ice flow broke into two, and on April 9, 1916, they had to get in the lifeboats. They spent five days in the boats crossing the open ocean, and eventually landed on Elephant Island, which is located near the northernmost part of the Antarctic Peninsula. It is located a full 346 miles away from where the endurance was abandoned, and it had been 497 days since they had been on solid ground. Believe it or not, I've actually been to Elephant Island. It was one of our stops when I went to Antarctica in 2011, and there is literally nothing there,

Starting point is 00:06:52 and most of the island is covered with ice year round. However, there is some dry land near the shore, which is where they ended up setting up camp. While they made it to land, they still had massive problems. No one would ever find them where they were located. There were no regular ship routes coming to the Antarctic Peninsula in 1960. Their only hope of survival, and it was a very slim hope, was to reach other humans so that they could send help and rescue everyone on the island. The problem was, the nearest human settlement were the whaling stations back on South Georgia Island.

Starting point is 00:07:23 South Georgia was 720 miles away. Not only was it far away, but between South Georgia and Elephant Islands was the Great Southern Ocean, which was some of the roughest seas on the planet. The decision was made that Shackleton was going to make the voyage with five of his men to try to get help. on South Georgia, and they were going to have to do it in a lifeboat that was 22 and a half feet or 6.9 meters long. They took the strongest of the three lifeboats, and the ship's carpenter, Harry McNish, made improvements to it. The ship was dubbed the James Caird after one of the expedition supporters. They put a deck on the ship to prevent water from getting inside and to allow the men a place where they could be sheltered. The sides of the boat were raised and the keel was

Starting point is 00:08:02 strengthened, and the sides were treated with seal, blood, and paint to make it more waterproof. roof. On April 24th, Shackleton and five other men set sail for South Georgia Island. One of those five men was the captain of the endurance, Frank Worsley, who would be responsible for navigation. Shackleton's right-hand manned Frank Wilde was left in charge of the crew back on Elephant Island. They spent 17 days in a tiny boat on an incredibly rough ocean. They had to deal with almost constant, massive swells, sometimes 10 meters high, and they had to spend much of those 17 days bailing out the boat. They took shifts with three men on and three men off. Their clothes weren't designed for the sea. It was designed for a cold, dry Antarctic climate. Their clothes weren't

Starting point is 00:08:43 waterproof, and they were wet and cold the entire time. Navigation was very difficult as the boat was being tossed so much, but Captain Worsley managed to keep the course. When they finally arrived at South Georgia on May 8th, they had made it to dry land, but there was still a problem. They landed on the south coast of the island where there were no settlements. They needed to get to the other side of the island. However, no one had ever crossed the mountains and glaciers of South Georgia on foot. Sailing around the island wasn't deemed possible given the conditions of the boat and the conditions of the men. So, after making a sea voyage that no one else had ever made before, three of the six men now had to take a hike that no one had ever made before. It was like the second leg of an extreme

Starting point is 00:09:24 survival byathlon. So, over the next 36 hours, they hiked a route that no one ever hiked before and came by land to the Norwegian whaling station of Stromness. The whalers there were shocked that people showed up on foot coming over the mountains on an otherwise uninhabited island in the middle of nowhere. The manager of the whaling station famously said, quote, Who the hell are you? And Shackleton responded with a cracked voice, My name is Shackleton.

Starting point is 00:09:51 They were suffering windburned, frostbite, and they were starving. The first order of business was to get the three men on the other side of the island, which was done quickly. The next order of business was to get the men who were on Elephant Island. He petitioned the Chilean government to send a small tug called the Yelcho to come pick up the rest of the men. The problem was it was now the Southern Hemisphere Winter. You can't easily sail to Antarctica and cross the Drake Passage in the middle of winter. There were four different rescue attempts starting in June, and the first three had to turn back due to ice and weather.

Starting point is 00:10:23 The fourth trip, however, was successful, and the 22 men on Elephant Island were rescued on August 30th, 1916. Shackleton was on the ship to greet them. They had survived on penguins and seals. They built shelters from the remaining lifeboats and canvas, and burned seal bludder for fuel. It wasn't really the time of year for seals and penguins, but thankfully they had no fear of humans, so what few there were were easy to hunt. On September 3rd, all 28 men from the Endurance arrived in Puntairena's Chile almost two years after setting out. Everyone had survived, and there were no fatalities. Now you might remember that I said there were two ships that were part of this expedition. The second ship, the Aurora, had a very similar problem.

Starting point is 00:11:06 The Aurora got stuck in ice. However, the ice they were stuck in broke free, sending the ship adrift into the ocean, stranding a team that was on the shore setting up the supply depots for Shackleton. They drifted for six months before they broke free of the ice. They eventually sailed to New Zealand before coming back to rescue the men who were still on shore in January of 1917. Shackleton actually sailed to New Zealand to be part of the crew that rescued the men from the Aurora. Shackleton arrived back in England in May of 1917.

Starting point is 00:11:36 He and his crew had totally missed the First World War up to that point. Shackleton volunteered for the war, but he was too old and was physically spent from the whole ordeal. He did have an advisory role in the North Russian Expeditionary Force during the Russian Civil War, but that was it. He planned one final expedition to Antarctica, and it actually started, but he died of a heart attack on January 5, 1922, one day after arriving on South Georgia Island. He was buried in South Georgia, and you can visit his grave today at the island's closest thing to a settlement, Gritvicken. In 2011, the ashes of Frank Wilde were reburied on Shackleton's right-hand side. Today, you can see the lifeboat used by Shackleton, the James Caird, on display at the Dulwich College

Starting point is 00:12:18 in South London. In March of 2022, the remains of the endurance were found under the ice in Antarctica, and it was found to be in remarkably good condition, given its preservation in cold water. The story of the endurance and its crew is one of the world's greatest stories of survival. The conditions they survived, the location where they survived, and the fact that they were no fatalities, makes Ernie Shackleton's failed expedition, one of the most memorable Antarctic expeditions in all of history. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Benji Long and Cameron Kiever.

Starting point is 00:12:56 I want to give a big shout out to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon, including the show's producers. Your support helps me put out a show every single day. And also, Patreon is currently the only place where Everything Everywhere or daily merchandise is available to the top tier of supporters. If you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and members of the Completionist Club, you can join the Everything Everywhere Daily Facebook group or Discord server. Links to everything are in the show notes.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Ernest Shackleton and the Rescue of the Endurance (Encore)

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