Shackleton's Endurance
The history of The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914-1917)
Discover the history of the famous ice ship and her crew
Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton (born 15th February 1874, died 5th January 1922) was an Irish-born British polar explorer involved in four pioneering expeditions to the Antarctic in the 1900s, during what became known as The Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. His first trip to the inhospitable region was as a junior member of Captain Falcon Scott’s Discovery Expedition (1901–1904), during which he, Scott and Edward Wilson set a new southern record by sledging to 82°S; eight degrees short of the geographic South Pole. However, Shackleton was forced to leave the expedition early, in 1903, following a ‘physical collapse’. It left him with a sense of failure and determined to return to the hostile polar conditions to prove he could tolerate them.
Four years later, in 1907, Shackleton organised the first of what would be three of his own Antarctic expeditions. He named it The Nimrod Expedition and although it was privately funded it was also called The British Antarctic Expedition. The aim was to reach the South Pole. Although it failed to do so, Shackleton and three others achieved a new ‘farthest south’ record: reaching 88° 23 on 9th January 1909 – just 112 miles short of their goal. The photograph taken to commemorate the event did not feature the leader. Shackleton took the photograph himself. Nevertheless, the feat led to him becoming a hero in the eyes of the British public and ‘Sir Ernest’, when King Edward VII knighted him in December 1909.
Shackleton had left an indelible mark in the Antarctic and two years later, when the Norwegian polar explorer, Roald Amundsen, became the first to reach the South Pole on 14th December 1911 he had this to say: “Sir Ernest Shackleton’s name will always be written in the annals of Antarctic exploration in letters of fire”.
In December 1913, Shackleton was again back in the news when he revealed details of his second expedition to Antarctica. Grandly titled, The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, its aim was to make the first overland crossing of the Antarctic continent. Two ships would be used to transport a team of 56 men to the Weddell Sea in the Antarctic, from where they would trek across the ice. The ships chosen for the expedition were the Scottish-built steam yacht, Aurora, and the three-masted sailing barquentine, Endurance, which also had a coal-powered steam engine.
Built in Norway and launched on 17th December 1912, she was initially named Polaris and was specifically designed for operating in pack ice.
Shackleton bought her in January 1914 after her original owners got into financial difficulty.
Sir Ernest paid £14,000 for Polaris, changed her name to Endurance, in recognition of his family motto, Fortitudine Vincimus (Through endurance we conquer), and declared she would carry him and his main party of 26 men and one cat to Antarctica. Also onboard would be 69 dogs, each weighing around 100lbs, who would pull the expeditions sledges across the ice. Aurora would carry the remaining 27 men, serving as back-up to Shackleton’s team.
The expedition caught the imagination of the British public and was largely privately funded, by donations raised mostly by Shackleton himself. The British government put in £10,000 and the largest single private investor was a Scottish jute magnate, Sir James Caird, from Dundee, who put up £24,000. One of Endurance’s three lifeboats was named in his honour, The James Caird. At 22-feet long, it would play a vital part in the drama that would later befall the expedition and its illustrious leader.
Momentous day
Shackleton and his polar exploration vessel’s ‘adventures’ began on Friday 1st August 1914, when Endurance, slipped her moorings at Millwall Dock in East London, where she had been fitted out for the Antarctic, and headed up the Thames bound for Plymouth on the Devonshire coast. It was the same day that Germany declared war on Russia. For months the press and public in the UK had been speculating that a major conflict with the German Empire was on the cards.
Endurance cruised only as few miles upriver before spending Saturday anchored off Southend. On Sunday afternoon, 3rd August, Shackleton took her down the Kent coast to Margate, where he again moored, as news broke that Germany had declared war on France. The following morning Shackleton went ashore to read in the newspapers a call to arms – a general mobilisation. An Ad in the Personal Column of The Times read: “To all who call themselves English gentlemen – are you drilled and ready to defend your country?”
Shackleton realised his expedition was finished before it had even begun: “I immediately went on board and mustered all hands and told them that I proposed to send a telegram to the Admiralty offering the ships, stores, and, if they agreed, our own services to the country in the event of war breaking out. All hands immediately agreed, and I sent off a telegram in which everything was placed at disposal of the Admiralty. We only asked that, in the event of the declaration of the war, the Expedition might be considered as a single unit…”
To Shackleton and his crew’s surprise they received a telegram response from the Admiralty within the hour telling them to “proceed” with the expedition. A little later Shackleton received a further wire, from the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill: “In which we were thanked for our offer, and saying that the authorities desired that the Expedition, which had the full sanction and support of the Scientific and Geographical Societies, should go on.”
At 11.20pm that same day, Monday 4th August 1914, Churchill reported to Prime Minister Herbert Asquith and his cabinet that a wireless message had been sent to all Royal Navy warships announcing that Britain was now at war with Germany. King George V had declared war half an hour earlier with the words “It is a terrible catastrophe, but it is not our fault.”
Endurance duly set sail for Plymouth, where Sir Ernest received a summons from George V: “The King sent for me and handed me the Union Jack to carry on the Expedition.”
Three days later, Saturday 8th August 1914, Endurance left Plymouth for Buenos Aires, without Shackleton on board. He was to travel there on an another, faster, ship. Four months later Endurance and Shackleton were in South Georgia, in the Grytviken whaling station, about to cast off for the Weddell Sea. He’d chosen to go there, rather than the Falkland Islands, because he thought they might be attacked by Vice-Admiral Maximillian von Spee’s Imperial German Naval squadron which, on 1st November 1914, had inflicted the Royal Navy’s first defeat in more than 100 years at Coronel in the Pacific off the coast of Chile. Von Spee’s two armoured cruisers and three light cruisers had sunk HMS Good Hope and HMS Monmouth with the loss of 1,650 British sailors. German casualties numbered three wounded.
Shackleton was right to be concerned about the Falklands as a safe haven. Three days after Endurance left South Georgia for the Antarctic, von Spee’s five warships arrived off Port Stanley with the aim of capturing the wireless and coaling stations that made them such a strategic target. Unfortunately for the German Vice-Admiral a Royal Navy battle squadron was already in the islands, sent there by the Admiralty in London. Under the command of Admiral Doveton Sturdee, nine Royal Navy warships were no match for the Germans and in just a few hours, on the afternoon and early evening of 8th December. 1914, the British sank four cruisers with the loss of more than 1,800 German sailors and Admiral von Spee. Two further German transport vessels were scuttled and the Royal Navy had won what became known as The Battle of the Falkland Islands, with the loss of 10 dead and 19 wounded. The Battle of Coronel had been revenged.
News that the Battle of Coronel had been revenged reached Shackleton and his men as they were encountering the first serious threats to the whole expedition. As the sea battle off the Falklands was raging, Endurance was being forced to alter course by thick pack ice. On 14th December, the ship was forced to stop for 24 hours. When three days later, the vessel was halted again, Shackleton commented: “I had been prepared for evil conditions in the Weddell Sea but had hoped that the pack would be loose. What we were encountering was fairly dense pack of a very obstinate character.”
Shackleton was stubborn too and refused to abandon his plans. As December became. January 2015, Endurance had continued to make slow progress southwards, but the ice was becoming ever more of a problem and continually forcing the ship to go in the wrong direction. By 18th January, a combination of bad weather and pack ice had once again forced Endurance to a halt. She was stranded, trapped in the ice, for 10 days; her crew forced to damp down her coal fires to save fuel.
The crew celebrated Valentine’s Day on the ice with chisels, saws and other implements as they attempted to break their ship free. It was a futile effort and Shackleton realised he and his men were facing the very real prospect of spending a polar winter in the “inhospitable arms of the pack”.
Ten days later Shackleton accepted the inevitable. Endurance was held fast in the ice, having reached her most southerly latitude – 76 degrees 58’S – but was now drifting with ice pack in a northerly direction. On 24th February 1915, with temperatures dropping to -20 C, Sir Ernest ordered that Endurance should be turned into winter quarters and would no longer operate a routine as a ship. The dogs were taken off and housed in ice-kennels and the ship’s interior was converted. They also rigged a wireless station, even though the location was too remote to send or receive signals.
After exactly eight months in the ice, during which time the 28 men and their dogs had kept fit by exercising and playing games, the Antarctic ice began to win its battle with Endurance. On 24th October 1915, the ship’s hull began to bend and splinter. As the timbers broke under the pressure, they made a noise the crew would later describe as like the sound of “heavy fireworks” and “the blasting of guns”.
Three days later, as temperatures plunged to -26C, Shackleton gave the order to ‘abandon ship’ and prepare for a long trek across the ice. Endurance’s rudder post had been torn away and her stern crushed. Shackleton wrote: “We have been compelled to abandon the ship, which is crushed beyond all hope of ever being righted, we are alive and well, and we have stores and equipment for the task that lies before us. The task is to reach land with all the members of the Expedition. It is hard to write what I feel”.
For the next few weeks, the crew salvaged as much as they could from what was fast becoming a wreck. Amongst the supplies saved were the photographs, film and cameras belonging to the expedition’s official photographer, Frank Hurley. Had they not been saved we would not have today the incredible pictures taken by Hurley during the voyage and subsequent time on the ice. But not all survived. In those days photographs were made by using heavy glass plates as negatives. The crew knew they could only carry a certain number of them. Hurley chose 120 of the around 550 photographs he had taken. The rest, it is said, were smashed.
The story of how Sir Ernest Shackleton and his 27 fellow Transarctic-Expedition members survived their ordeal on the ice, which lasted for two years almost without the loss of a single soul, is the subject of another chapter. An important one, which continues to be told to this day as a one of the most inspiring and important examples of leadership and strength of the human spirit. Students at many universities learn about Shackleton and his exploits as part of their pathway to business.
The final throes of the Endurance came on 21st November 1915, when her crew and Shackleton’s expedition party witnessed her finally slipping beneath the ice, as it continued to drift. What was described as a ‘pressure wave’ hit the Endurance and the ice floes parted, the entire vessel fell into the Weddell Sea below.
The ice then closed together, and Endurance was gone. Her final position was recorded by her captain, Frank Worsley, in his diary as 68°39′30″ S, 52°26′30″ W. It was a calculation, rather than a sextant-based fixed position.
107 years later, when Endurance was finally found at a depth of 3,008 metres (9,869 feet), by the FMHT organised and funded Endurance22 Expedition, on 5th March 2022, it became clear just how good that diary-note was. The wreckage was located approximately 10 km (6.2 miles) from the co-ordinates in Frank Worsley’s log.
On 31st May 1916, 37 days after escaping from the ravages of Antarctica, with the rest of his Endurance expedition crew still missing, Sir Ernest Shackleton arrived in Port Stanley from South Georgia. At first, he refused to tell customs officers who he was and they took him to be a German spy. Only after swearing them to secrecy was he allowed ashore.
The reason for Shackleton’s subterfuge was directly connected to the Endurance – he had an exclusive deal with Britain’s (then) biggest national newspaper, The Daily Chronicle, about what happened to her. One of his first acts in the Falklands was to cable the paper’s news editor, Ernest Perris, and update him on the story so far. The next day, the circulation of the newspaper increased even further as its front page broke the “World Exclusive” news about what had happened to Endurance, him and his missing crew. The world was still at war, so this amazing tale of heroism and survival against all the odds was a welcome distraction from its horrors.
Whilst in Stanley, Shackleton was also in touch with King George V, who was anxious to know the fate of the rest of the Endurance’s crew. Although he kept a low profile whilst in the Falklands, some residents did get to hear and meet the famous explorer when the then Governor, Sir William Douglas Young, chaired a ‘town hall meeting’ on 3rd June 1916; later said to be one of the largest gatherings the islands had ‘ever seen’. Shackleton gave the assembled throng his first in-person account of what had happened to him and his crew and their polar ship in the Weddell Sea, and why. The Falkland Islands Magazine and Church Paper gave its version of events in its July 1916 issue: “Sir Ernest, who still bore traces of the privations and anxieties of many months duration, gave an account of his adventures which thrilled all who were fortunate enough to hear it…”
On 31st May 1916, 37 days after having escaped from the ravages of Antarctica, with the rest of his crew still missing, Sir Ernest Shackleton arrived in Port Stanley from South Georgia. At first he refused to tell customs officers who he was and they took him to be a German spy. Only after swearing them to secrecy was he allowed ashore.
The reason for Shackleton’s subterfuge was directly connected to the Endurance – he had an exclusive deal with Britain’s (then) biggest national newspaper, The Daily Chronicle about what happened to her. One of his first acts in Stanley was to cable the paper’s news editor, Ernest Perris, and update him on the story so far. The next day, the circulation of the newspaper increased even further as its front page broke the “World Exclusive” news about Shackleton, his ship and the missing crew.
The story even pushed the huge naval Battle of Jutland into second place. It had taken place on the same day as Shackleton’s cable and involved 100,000 British and German sailors. Although indecisive, the battle, between 151 Royal Navy warships and 99 German vessels, enabled Britain to continue to control crucial shipping lanes and retain a blockade that would contribute to Germany’s eventual defeat in 1918. The German navy lost more than 2,500 men in the action and the Royal Navy over 6,000.
Despite being such a massive story, Jutland continued to bow to the Chronicle’s sensational front-page coverage of Shackleton’s exploits for the next two days. The explorer, and Endurance, was a welcome distraction from the horrors of the war. Whilst in Stanley, Shackleton was also in touch with King George V, who was also anxious to know the fate of the rest of the Endurance’s crew.
During his stay in Stanley, Sir Ernest was put up in Government House, while Endurance’s captain, Frank Worsley, was lent the cabin belonging to the captain of HMS Glasgow, the Royal Navy Light Cruiser which happened to be in Stanley at the time.
Although Shackleton was generally keeping a low profile a large number of the islands’ residents did get to hear and meet him when the then Governor, Sir William Douglas Young, chaired a ‘Town Hall Meeting’ on 3rd June. Later said to be one of the largest gatherings the islands had ‘ever seen’. Shackleton gave the assembled throng a brief resume of what had happened to him, his crew and how Endurance had been crushed in the ice, and why. The Falkland Islands Magazine and Church Paper gave its version of events in its July 1916 issue: “Sir Ernest, who still bore traces of the privations and anxieties of many months duration, gave an account of his adventures which thrilled all who were fortunate enough to hear it.”
Shackleton in the Falklands
On 31st May 1916, 37 days after having escaped from the ravages of Antarctica, with the rest of his crew still missing, Sir Ernest Shackleton arrived in Port Stanley from South Georgia. At first he refused to tell customs officers who he was and they took him to be a German spy. Only after swearing them to secrecy was he allowed ashore.
The reason for Shackleton’s subterfuge was directly connected to the Endurance – he had an exclusive deal with Britain’s (then) biggest national newspaper, The Daily Chronicle about what happened to her. One of his first acts in Stanley was to cable the paper’s news editor, Ernest Perris, and update him on the story so far. The next day, the circulation of the newspaper increased even further as its front page broke the “World Exclusive” news about Shackleton, his ship and the missing crew.
The story even pushed the huge naval Battle of Jutland into second place. It had taken place on the same day as Shackleton’s cable and involved 100,000 British and German sailors. Although indecisive, the battle, between 151 Royal Navy warships and 99 German vessels, enabled Britain to continue to control crucial shipping lanes and retain a blockade that would contribute to Germany’s eventual defeat in 1918. The German navy lost more than 2,500 men in the action and the Royal Navy over 6,000.
Despite being such a massive story, Jutland continued to bow to the Chronicle’s sensational front-page coverage of Shackleton’s exploits for the next two days. The explorer, and Endurance, was a welcome distraction from the horrors of the war. Whilst in Stanley, Shackleton was also in touch with King George V, who was also anxious to know the fate of the rest of the Endurance’s crew.
During his stay in Stanley, Sir Ernest was put up in Government House, while Endurance’s captain, Frank Worsley, was lent the cabin belonging to the captain of HMS Glasgow, the Royal Navy Light Cruiser which happened to be in Stanley at the time.
Although Shackleton was generally keeping a low profile a large number of the islands’ residents did get to hear and meet him when the then Governor, Sir William Douglas Young, chaired a ‘Town Hall Meeting’ on 3rd June. Later said to be one of the largest gatherings the islands had ‘ever seen’. Shackleton gave the assembled throng a brief resume of what had happened to him, his crew and how Endurance had been crushed in the ice, and why. The Falkland Islands Magazine and Church Paper gave its version of events in its July 1916 issue: “Sir Ernest, who still bore traces of the privations and anxieties of many months duration, gave an account of his adventures which thrilled all who were fortunate enough to hear it.”
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