I was excited as I got up as we were close to Elephant Island. However, that excitement decreased by the time I reached the lounge to make a hot drink. The seas were noticeably choppy and it was misty. Sadly, it didn't improve. However, after breakfast we did approach to view the small beach where Shackleton and his crew made their second landfall at Point Wild on Elephant Island. This was the beach where Shackleton and his five colleagues left for the over nine hundred mile crossing to South Georgia.
On 9 Apr 1916, the ice floe that Ernest Shackleton and the men of the Endurance finally started to break up. They had already been trapped in the ice since the Endurance became stuck in Feb 1915, until she finally sank in Nov 1915. The crew took to the sea and after five days of sailing across near three hundred and fifty miles of sea, they reached Elephant Island. They landed at Cape Valentine on the North East corner of the island, but two days later they moved to a more sheltered location at Point Wild. Unfortunately, Elephant Island was well away from any whaling routes and it was unlikely that a passing ship would discover them. Therefore, on 24 Apr 1916, Shackleton, Frank Worsley, Tom Crean, John Vincent, Tim McCarthy and Harry 'Chippy' McNish took to the open sea again in their attempt to reach South Georgia. I wonder how many of the crew left on the beach in Frank Hurley's evocative photo (which can be quickly found by an internet search), thought they would see Shackleton again, as they waved him off.
Perhaps it's fitting that the weather was so bad, as it helps to emphasise how grim it must have been to be on this beach for over four and a half months, until their ultimate rescue by the Shackleton, Worsley and Crean, who returned to Elephant Island on the Chilean vessel Yelcho to retrieve the twenty-two men left behind on 30 Aug 1916. Wild and the crew were stuck there during the Antarctic Winter when there were few Penguins and Seals around. But any that they could catch, would have been quickly killed for food, with their blubber being used in blubber lamps. They survived by upturning the two remaining lifeboats as shelter, with rocks and their tents to make the area around and under the two boats more windproof. Shackleton and Wild had agreed that if Shackleton hadn't rescued them by the following Summer, they were to take to the boats again in the hope of reaching Deception Island in the South Shetland Islands. Fortunately, they were rescued before having to attempt this dangerous sea crossing.
We left for the South side of Elephant Island as Expedition Leader Ali thought the conditions might be better on that side of the island.
I will cover the rest of the day in the next Blog Post.