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Watching and Waiting “The Boss May Come Today!”
T
he plan was a daring one—be the first to cross the icy continent of Antarctica and live to tell about it. When Sir Ernest Shackleton and his crew of 27 men, 69 dogs, 1 cat, and 1 stowaway set sail for the edge of Antarctica on December 5, 1914, no one knew just how harrowing their journey would be.1 Aboard their aptly named ship, the H.M.S. Endurance, progress was slow as they hit early ice in the arctic Weddell Sea. Conditions worsened, and on January 19, 1915, the ship was stuck fast in the ice, “frozen like an almond in the middle of a chocolate bar,” wrote crew member Thomas Orde-Lees.2 For eight months the crew huddled aboard the trapped Endurance, hoping that when the ice thawed, the ship would be freed. Unfortunately, when the ice began thawing the following September, pressure became so great that eventually the vessel was crushed, and it sank beneath the arctic water. The party was forced to set up camp on the ice, but as the ice continued melting, the group had to transfer their provisions and equipment to a larger ice floe, which eventually broke in two. At that point, there was no choice but to take what they could in three lifeboats and head for the nearest land. After six horrific days on the freezing arctic sea, with no fresh water to drink and half of the crew suffering from seasickness and dysentery, the exhausted group finally landed on Elephant Island, 556 kilometers (346 miles) from where the Endurance sank. For the first time in more than a year they stood on solid ground. Originally landing on the tip of the island, the group moved westward to a more suitable spot, set up camp using two of the lifeboats to construct makeshift huts, and named the site “Point Wild.”3 SEEKING HELP
Realizing the chances of being found on this small, uninhabited arctic island were slim, Shackleton determined that he, along with five other trusted men, would take a lifeboat and seek help from a whaling station on South Georgia island, more than 800 miles away. 18
May 2021 AdventistWorld.org
Photo: IBG/Royal Geographical Society
