Shackelton's 'Endurance" is found

[cmj8591]

The best book I've read about this expedition is "South" written by Shackelton and Frank Hurley, who was the expedition photographer and made the famous film of the Endurance's last moments before it got swallowed up by the ice. Shackelton made one fatal mistake when he prepared for his expedition. The Endurance had straight sides. Arctic explorers used boats with rounded sides and bottom. When the Endurance got stuck in the ice, it pressed in on it's sides and crushed it. A round bottom ship would have been lifted by the ice and tend to stay on top of it. Shackelton knew this but thought that the ship would have made it to a point where it could drop them off then get out of the Weddell Sea before the ice overtook them. The ice came faster than he anticipated. Not withstanding that mistake, this is an amazing story of human survival and is a lesson in the importance of organization and leadership.

 

[mtgianni]

I am in awe of E. Shackleton, we all are. Capt. Worsley deserves the same or greater awe on that expedition. Making landfall on S. Georgia Island with only a few sun sights was almost impossible but he did it.
I don't know how many of you have been on a small boat in sporty condition but steering a true course for even a short time, even when you are warm and dry, is very fatiguing as the boat is being batted around.
To take into account being set off course by currents and wind, being forced to alter course by wind and waves took world class dead reckoning.
My hat is off.

Worsley would have been the one that plotted the point where the Endurance sank through the ice. TO have it drift and settle and be within 4 miles at that latitude is amazing.
I am next to my inlaws at a full sized replica of the James Caird that they sailed from Elephant Island to South Georgia. IIRC it is a 26 foot boat. Replica is located outside Punta Arenas

 

[cmj8591]

I am in awe of E. Shackleton, we all are. Capt. Worsley deserves the same or greater awe on that expedition. Making landfall on S. Georgia Island with only a few sun sights was almost impossible but he did it.
I don't know how many of you have been on a small boat in sporty condition but steering a true course for even a short time, even when you are warm and dry, is very fatiguing as the boat is being batted around.
To take into account being set off course by currents and wind, being forced to alter course by wind and waves took world class dead reckoning.
My hat is off.

One part of the tale that tends to get sort of forgotten about is what they did when they landed in South Georgia. There were 5 men that made the journey on the Caird from Elephant Island. When they got to S. Georgia, they landed on the south side of the island. The whaling station was on the north side. In between was 10000 foot mountains that had never been crossed. They couldn't get around the island to the north side in their boat so Shackleton made the decision to land and cross on foot. Shackleton, Worsley and Crean were the three most healthy of the five so they made the hike. They took some screws out of the boat and put them through the soles of their boots for traction. They took three days worth of provisions and set out across the mountains. They got lost and had to retrace some of their route but I think I recall that it took them about 72 hours to make it to the whaling station. Some of the passes through the mountains were at 5000 feet. Once at the station, they took a ship and rescued the two on the south side. Shackleton then planned an expedition to rescue the rest of his crew from Elephant Island. Incredible as it is, there were no casualties.

 

[steelslaver]

I first started salmon seining in AK in the days before GPS. We would leave Anacortes WA and go 600 miles N to Ketchican. There are only relatively short sections where you have no visual way points during the day and often a night there is a light or something. But in places and in the fog you had to steer by compass. Even in a warm wheel house of a 56' boat keeping right on a line is hard and usually after getting to a know way point after steering by compass you would be off quite a bit. That was with a motor instead of a sail.

Hitting a small Is after 800 miles of sailing in bad seas with very little to navigate with would be harder than making an 800yrd shot with open sights using a rifle someone just handed you and said "here shoot that deer".

 

[oldbrownhat]

The Newport stowaway on Shackleton shipwreck

A stowaway who found himself on a legendary Antarctic expedition that ended in shipwreck has been remembered as a bid to find the vessel gains pace.

BBC article here.

"...Andrew Hemmings, author of Secret Newport said: "Perce had been in the Merchant Navy since he was 14, and by age 18 he'd been shipwrecked in Montevideo, Uruguay.

"Soon after he and his American friend William Bakewell heard about Shackleton's voyage from Buenos Aires to the Antarctic, so they made their way overland to try out for the crew, but whilst Bakewell was accepted, Perce was deemed too inexperienced."

He said the pair could not bear to be parted, so Bakewell hid Perce in his locker for three days, until the subterfuge was eventually discovered by a furious Shackleton.

"By this stage the ship was too far into its voyage to turn back, so Shackleton was faced with a fait accompli," he said.

"Enraged, he told Perce that 'on missions like this' - when food was short - 'stowaways were the first to get eaten'."

He said a cocky Perce riposted to Shackleton: "I think the crew would get more meat from you Sir!"

Mr Hemmings said from that point on, Shackleton had a particular soft spot for Perce, assigning him to the ship's galley to prepare meals of seal, whale, and latterly even the voyage's huskies. .."​

 

[oldbrownhat]

The New Captain of the Endurance Shipwreck Is an Anemone

NY Times article here (and probably elsewhere easier to access)

A who's who of the new invertebrate crew steering Ernest Shackleton's sunken ship in the Weddell Sea.

Huw Griffiths, a marine bio-geographer at the British Antarctic Survey, was eating pancakes when news broke that the wreck of the Endurance — the famed ship helmed by Ernest Shackleton that sank in an expedition in 1915 — had been discovered.

Dr. Griffiths found himself far more interested in the footage than his breakfast. His first thought was that the ship looked almost fake, considering how eerily pristine it remained 106 years after sinking to the bottom of the Weddell Sea near Antarctica. His second thought: What was living on it?

Over the years, the ship had become as lush as a garden. In a Twitter thread, Dr. Griffiths zoomed in on the wreck footage to spotlight creatures that he recognized: anemones, sponges, sea squirts, sea stars and a lemon-yellow sea lily. Other tenants were more mysterious — white tendrils, transparent blobs and a mysterious feather-shaped creature....

...Although Dr. Rodriguez was happy to see the wreck found, she was even happier to see the old ship's hull dominated by anemones, which she said are understudied animals. "The group is about 600 million years old. That is what fascinates me," Dr. Rodriguez said. "How they endure: They are tough things."

... glass sponges can live for thousands of years, and anemones for many decades...

..."The old crew got off alive, and this is who's moved in," Dr. Griffiths said. "Who knows where that sea anemone is taking it?"​

There is a link in the article to Huw Griffiths' Twitter feed, which has pictures.