When Your Life Depends on It by Brad Borkan & David Hirzel

Author:Brad Borkan & David Hirzel
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781945312076
Publisher: Terra Nova Press
Published: 2017-04-08T04:00:00+00:00

Changing plans

Until, that is, the morning of May 7, 1915 after a severe blizzard, when R.W. Richards stepped outside the hut and looked up to see that the ship was gone. Open water lapped at the previously iced-in beach. The ice had gone out in one vast, solid sheet overnight, taking the Aurora and most of the shore party’s provisions with it.

The men on shore were marooned for at least a season and possibly more. The tents, the bulk of their provisions, the Primus stoves, the sleeping bags, and everything absolutely necessary to spend months in the field laying more depots had gone with the ship. For all they knew, the ship could have been crushed by the ice and sunk. The hope of rescue was slim; word of their fate might be years getting out.

They had no way of knowing that the Aurora was still afloat and would remain stuck in the ice for another nine months; she moved slowly northwest with the drifting ice, powerless to escape, with tons of now useless sledging gear and rations neatly stowed in her hold. She, at least, was relatively safe.

There were ten men stuck on shore now; six of whom were still on their depot journey. They had enough on hand to get by, themselves. But there was nowhere near enough to support the overland journeys required in the spring, to create and stock the depots for Shackleton. Yet a promise had been made. Regardless of circumstances, Mackintosh and his men agreed it must be kept.

Reunited again in the hut at Cape Evans, they had the winter to figure out a way to keep that promise. First came the inventory. As previously noted, every sailor among them knew well the Admiral Lord Nelson’s admonition, “Do the best you can with what you’ve got.” What did they have? They raided the nearby huts—Shackleton’s 1907 hut at Cape Royds and Scott’s 1901 one at Hut Point—and gathered every item of any value. This included bolts of canvas, balding sleeping bags, battered Primus stoves, worn-out sledges, decade-old biscuits and dried preserved sledging food—everything that could be restored for use in the big push in the spring. Through their ingenuity and perseverance, they were able to develop enough food and supplies to stock a series of depots all the way to the Beardmore Glacier. Amazingly, all was going according to the plans originally made by Shackleton back in England.

Meeting the promise would still be a massive challenge. It would take a great deal of effort for ten men to take on the work of twice their number, with four dogs standing in for the original nine that survived the voyage down, and with salvaged, damaged and worn equipment scavenged from three previous expeditions.

More was about to be demanded of them than anyone had anticipated. All the men ashore had joined the expedition with a good idea of what would be expected, and had accepted their positions and hazardous duty pay based on that understanding. Now they needed to do so much more work, at a greater personal risk.

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