Ships That Made History · Episode 6
Endurance
The series finale. Shackleton's Endurance is frozen into the Antarctic ice and crushed. Then a winter on the floe, a lifeboat voyage of eight hundred miles, three men walking over unmapped mountains, and every man of the Endurance coming home. Plus the day in 2022 when she was found, her name still on her stern.
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Carol May 20th, 1916. A whaling station on the island of South Georgia, in the far South Atlantic.
Shannon Three men come stumbling down out of the mountains. Their hair is long and matted. Their faces are black with soot and grease. Their clothes are in rags.
Carol Two little boys see them, and run away.
Shannon They find the station manager, a man who'd met Shackleton before. He comes to the door and stares. He doesn't recognize them. Don't you know me? says the man in front. I know your voice, says the manager.
Carol And the man in front says, My name is Shackleton.
Shannon Welcome to Ships That Made History. One ship, one story.
Carol Last time, the Titanic, and the little Carpathia that raced to the rescue. This time, our last episode. A ship crushed in the ice, and every one of her men coming home.
Shannon Episode six. Endurance.
Carol So who was Shackleton?
Shannon Ernest Shackleton. An Irish-born explorer, and one of the great heroes of the age of polar exploration. He'd already been to Antarctica twice, and nearly reached the South Pole.
Carol And this time?
Shannon This time, his plan was even bigger. To walk all the way across Antarctica, from one side to the other, by way of the South Pole. Nobody had ever done it.
Carol And he needed a ship.
Shannon He bought a brand-new wooden ship from Norway. She'd been built to take tourists on Arctic hunting trips, and she was one of the strongest wooden ships ever made. Her name was Polaris.
Carol But that's not the name we know.
Shannon No. Shackleton renamed her, after his family's motto. By endurance we conquer.
Carol Endurance.
Shannon Endurance.
Carol And when did they leave?
Shannon In August 1914. And just as they were leaving England, the First World War broke out.
Carol Oh my.
Shannon Shackleton offered the ship and all his men to the Navy, for the war. Within an hour, a telegram came back from the Admiralty. One word. Proceed. And then a longer one from Winston Churchill himself, saying, go on.
Carol So they proceeded.
Shannon They proceeded. They sailed down to South Georgia, an island full of whaling stations, near the bottom of the world. And on December 5th, 1914, the Endurance left South Georgia and headed into the Weddell Sea, toward Antarctica.
Carol With how many men?
Shannon Twenty-eight. Including one they didn't expect.
Carol A stowaway?
Shannon A stowaway. Back in Buenos Aires, a young sailor named Perce Blackborow had sneaked on board and hidden in a locker. Three days out to sea, they found him.
Carol And Shackleton?
Shannon Shackleton gave him a famous telling-off. And then he told him that on these trips, if they ran out of food, the stowaway would be the first one eaten.
Carol (laughs) Oh no!
Shannon It was a joke. Mostly. And Blackborow became the ship's steward, and one of the crew.
Carol So, the Weddell Sea.
Shannon The Weddell Sea is full of pack ice. Huge sheets of frozen sea, crashing and grinding together. The Endurance pushed her way through it for weeks.
Carol And then?
Shannon And then, in January 1915, the ice closed in all around her. She was frozen in. Just a day or two's sail from where they wanted to land.
Carol So close.
Shannon So close. And the ice didn't let go. For months, the Endurance drifted, locked in the ice, carried slowly along with it.
Carol So what did they do, all those months?
Shannon Shackleton knew that keeping everyone cheerful was the most important thing. So he kept them busy. They moved their bunks into the warmest part of the ship, and nicknamed it the Ritz.
Carol The Ritz!
Shannon The Ritz. They played football and hockey on the ice. They had sixty-nine sled dogs on board, and they held dog-sled races. There was a banjo, and singing, and lectures in the evenings.
Carol Sounds almost fun.
Shannon Some days it was. And they had a brilliant photographer, Frank Hurley, who took pictures the whole time. His photos of the Endurance, frozen in the ice, with her masts lit up in the dark, are some of the most famous photographs ever taken.
Carol But the ice was getting stronger.
Shannon It was. As the months went by, the ice pressed harder and harder on the ship. Her timbers groaned and cracked. And in October 1915, the ice started to crush her.
Carol And they had to leave.
Shannon They had to leave. They took everything they could, the food, the tents, the dogs, and three of the ship's lifeboats, and set up camp on the ice.
Carol And the ship?
Shannon For about a month, she stayed there, broken, held up by the ice. And then, in November, Shackleton called out, She's going, boys! They all ran to watch. She slipped under, and the ice closed over her. And Shackleton said, quietly, She's gone, boys.
Carol So now they're living on the ice.
Shannon Living on the ice. On a huge, floating sheet of ice, drifting slowly north, for months. Waiting for it to break up near the open sea.
Carol And when it did?
Shannon In April 1916, the ice started breaking apart under them. So they climbed into the three lifeboats, and rowed and sailed for days through freezing seas.
Carol To where?
Shannon To a little rocky island called Elephant Island. And when they stepped onto the beach, it was the first time they'd stood on solid land in more than a year.
Carol More than a year!
Shannon Almost a year and a half. Some of the men were so happy, they picked up handfuls of stones and let them run through their fingers.
Carol But nobody would ever find them there.
Shannon Nobody would ever find them there. It was a wild, empty island, far from any shipping lanes. If they were going to be rescued, someone had to go and get help.
Carol And that someone was Shackleton.
Shannon Shackleton. He picked five men, and took the biggest of the lifeboats, the James Caird. Twenty-two feet long. And they set out across the stormiest ocean in the world.
Carol To where?
Shannon Back to South Georgia. Eight hundred miles away.
Carol In a lifeboat.
Shannon In a lifeboat. Huge waves, freezing spray, everything soaked. The man finding the way was the ship's captain, Frank Worsley. In two weeks, he only saw the sun a handful of times, to fix their position with his sextant.
Carol And if he missed?
Shannon If he missed South Georgia, there was nothing but open ocean beyond it. But he didn't miss. After about two weeks, they saw the cliffs of South Georgia.
Carol He hit it.
Shannon He hit it. It's one of the greatest feats of navigation ever.
Carol But that's not the end.
Shannon No. They'd landed on the wrong side of the island. The whaling stations were all on the other side, across a range of icy mountains that no one had ever crossed.
Carol So they walked.
Shannon Shackleton, Worsley, and a tough Irish sailor named Tom Crean. With fifty feet of rope, a carpenter's adze, and screws from the boat stuck into their boots for grip. They walked for thirty-six hours straight, over glaciers and mountains, with no map.
Carol And that's how they ended up at the whaling station.
Shannon That's how they ended up knocking on that door, black with grease, saying, My name is Shackleton.
Carol Did they ever talk about it afterward?
Shannon Shackleton wrote that on that long walk, he often felt there were four of them, not three. That someone else was walking with them. And he said that afterward, Worsley told him he'd felt it too, and so had Crean.
Carol And the men on Elephant Island?
Shannon Twenty-two men were still waiting there, living under two upturned lifeboats. And Shackleton never stopped trying to reach them. He tried again and again, on different ships, but the ice kept blocking the way.
Carol How long did they wait?
Shannon More than four months. And then, on August 30th, 1916, a little Chilean ship called the Yelcho came through the fog.
Carol And Shackleton was on it.
Shannon Shackleton climbed down into a little rowboat, and as it came in toward the beach, he was standing up in the bow. He called out to his second in command, Frank Wild, Are you all well?
Carol And?
Shannon And Wild called back, All safe! All well!
Carol Every one of them.
Shannon Every one of them. Every single man of the Endurance came home.
Carol And the ship?
Shannon The Endurance lay at the bottom of the Weddell Sea for more than a hundred years. Nearly two miles down, under the ice. Many people thought she'd never be found.
Carol But.
Shannon But in 2022, an expedition went looking, on a big icebreaker, with underwater robots. And on March 5th, 2022, they found her.
Carol What did she look like?
Shannon Amazing. Sitting upright on the sea floor. Her wood still in remarkable shape, because the cold, dark water there has none of the worms that eat shipwrecks in other oceans. And across her stern, you can still read her name, in big letters. Endurance.
Carol After a hundred years.
Shannon After more than a hundred and six years. And the day they found her, March 5th, was exactly one hundred years after Shackleton was laid to rest, on South Georgia.
Carol So can you visit the Endurance?
Shannon No. She's a protected historic site, and nobody is allowed to disturb her. She'll stay right where she is.
Carol But you can see the boat.
Shannon You can see the James Caird, the little lifeboat that sailed eight hundred miles. It's at Dulwich College in London, the school Shackleton went to as a boy.
Carol And South Georgia?
Shannon You can visit South Georgia on a cruise to Antarctica. Shackleton is buried there, at Grytviken. And there's a tradition. Visitors raise a toast to the Boss.
Carol The Boss.
Shannon That's what his men called him.
Carol That's the Endurance. A ship frozen in the ice, a lifeboat that crossed the stormiest sea on earth, three men walking over the mountains, and every one of them coming home.
Shannon And with that, that's the end of our voyage.
Carol Six ships. The Niña, the Pinta and the Santa María. The Victoria, all the way around the world. The Mayflower and her hundred and two passengers. The Bounty and her open boat. The Titanic and the Carpathia. And the Endurance.
Shannon Ships that made history.
Carol Thanks so much for sailing with us.
Shannon And in the best maritime tradition, we wish you clear horizons.