Sir Ernest Shackleton embarked at the age of 16. The young Englishman quickly progressed in the hierarchy of the ship to become captain at the age of 24. He participated (without glory) in a first expedition to Antarctica in 1901 on the Discovery. Then he tried to reach the South Pole on foot with three men in 1908, an expedition that made him famous and allowed him to find the financing for the next one.
Indeed, frustrated not to have reached the South Pole, Shackleton conceived, from 1912, a new project of transantarctic exploration with two ships, placed in the north and in the south of the continent in order to prepare bases of food to the disembarked team
Helped by his strong and new notoriety, he raised a considerable amount of money for the time, allowing him to arm two ships, the Endurance and the Aurora.
A heterogeneous recruitment
The published ad stated: " Search for men for dangerous trip. Low wages. Freezing cold. Long months of total darkness. Permanent danger. Return not guaranteed. Honor and recognition in case of success. "
5,000 volunteers attended the public interviews during which Sir Ernest was much more interested in character and human qualities than in technical skills. The expedition counted several good singers, musicians, cooks, whose presence aimed at limiting the effects on the morale of the long austral winter
A start on the razor's edge
The departure was planned for the beginning of August 1914 when the First World War broke out! The head of the expedition then telegraphed the Admiralty to take part in the war and offer the ship, the supplies and the crew to the Admiralty General Staff, commanded by Winston Churchill. The latter answered only one word " Proceed. "
Thus, Shackleton and his crew moved away from Europe, soon to be on fire and blood, to throw themselves straight into a completely different danger, the polar ice
Prisoners of the ice!
On December 10, 1914, the Endurance arrived in contact with the ice cliffs of Coats Land, in the Wedell Sea. The winter is very cold and on January 19, 1915, the Endurance is blocked by the ice.
From week to week, the Endurance and its crew are drifting with the ice pack, moving away from the continent
During the summer of 1915, after 281 days in the ice, the boat was broken by the ice pack and the crew finally abandoned it in October, keeping only the dogs and 3 boats. It was already -25 degrees.
The ice pack is breaking up!
The crew of the Endurance then began a long journey on foot, on the ice floe, towards the mainland, but the task was titanic, as the drift of the ice floe pushed them further out to sea. Sir Ernest decided to wait for the ice to break up before launching the boats.
At the beginning of April 1916, the thaw arrived, dislocating the ice under their feet without leaving enough free passage for the boats. On April 9, 1916, the islet on which they had camped for 15 months broke up:
" at 11 o'clock in the morning, a sudden crack ran through our plate. On one side of the channel that opened, I saw the place where for so many months my head and shoulders had rested, and on the other side (the one where we were), the depression formed by my legs [euros]. How fragile and precarious had been our resting place! "
Three boats on the Southern Ocean
That same day, the three open boats, each 7 meters long, set sail in convoy. The outside temperature never exceeded -20 degrees at its warmest, the men sailed without food and with little water.
" Our thirst became terrible. We found a momentary relief in chewing small pieces of seal, from which we swallowed the blood; but our thirst then redoubled under the effect of the salting ".
The conditions of navigations are Dantesques, the more so as the clothes, in wool and cotton, protect only peueuros
Sheltered on the Elephant Island
After 4 days of navigation, they disembarked exhausted on Elephant Island, at the extreme north of the Antarctic Peninsula. They are now safe from the glacial drift, but very far from the sea routes, making any hope of rescue infinitesimal.
Shackleton quickly realized that he would have to go to South Georgia, nearly 800 nautical miles away, for help. He designed a light expedition, on a rowboat slightly modified by the carpenter with the addition of a deck and a makeshift rig, the raising of the planks, the addition of a ton of gravel ballast and the re-caulking with seal blood (!). This was the beginning of one of the most incredible crossings in the history of navigation.
