A friend invited me along to a talk by Stephen Venables last night called “In the steps of Shackleton”. I hadn't heard of Stephen Venables before, but he was the first Briton to climb Everest without supplementary oxygen and one of these people you envy because their life seems to be a constant adventure at the far flung corners of the earth.
Last night he was discussing Sir Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated attempt to be the first team to cross Antartica from one side to the other. Amundsen and Scott had already beaten Shackleton to the pole so if he wanted to get a “first” he needed to come up with something even more daring. Unfortunately it did not all go to plan and after departing from the island of South Georgia http://bit.ly/rx8p the ship carrying Shackleton's party, the Endurance, became trapped in sea ice. Repeated attempts to break through to Antartica failed and eventually both ship and crew became trapped. They drifted in the ice, completely unable to escape, for months and eventually the pressure crushed the ship and they had to abandon it and make camp on the ice.
When the sea ice started to melt, the party took to the three tiny lifeboats and made landfall on Elephant Island, a god-forsaken lump of rock hundreds of miles from civilisation http://bit.ly/41y7gk. Realising there was no hope of rescue from here, Shackleton and 5 others decided to try and sail the 800 miles to South Georgia in one of the life boats. Dead reckoning and amazing navigation skills would be necessary, as if they missed the island (which is only 100 miles long) the next landfall would be South Africa, and they would run out of supplies long before reaching it.
They set off and battled through freezing South Atlantic storms and miraculously about 14 days later managed to reach South Georgia. However, they had landed on the SW coast which was desolate and uninhabited. The whaling stations where they would find some small semblance of civilisation, but more importantly rescue, were on the NE coast across an umapped and never before crossed mountain range. Unwilling to put back to sea in their battered vessel, the decision was made for Shackleton and 2 other men to try and cross the range, leaving the 3 weaker men to shelter under the hull of the upturned lifeboat awaiting their return.
Amazingly, Shackleton and the 2 others managed to eventually cross 30 miles of snowy mountains and glaciers to reach the whaling stations and salvation. They then immediately set out in a boat and picked up the 3 men on the other side of South Georgia, before heading back to Elephant Island, not knowing what state they would find the other men in, assuming they were still alive at all. Sea ice prevented them from reaching Elephant Island on the first attempt and they retreated to the Falkland Islands from where they launched repeated rescue attempts until finally succeeding on their fourth try. Amazingly, all of the men on Elephant Island were still alive and the whole party had survived the ordeal.
Having originally left South Georgia on their original expedition on 5th December 1914, the remaining men on Elephant Island were finally rescued on 30th August 1916. During that time, World War One, which had only just started when the men left and was supposed to be “over by Christmas” had been raging for almost two years. http://bit.ly/hp5V8J
Stephen Venables has been to South Georgia several times and walked the route Shackleton took from the SW to NE side of the island. Even with modern equipment and mapping it looks like an amazing walk, and one can only imagine how difficult it must have been for Shackleton with only a carpenter's adze available to him in lieu of an ice axe, and a small stove for melting snow to get drinking water.
His lecture really brought the expeditions to life and if he writes like he talks then it was clear why he has one literature prizes for his mountaineering books.
If you have the opportunity, I would strongly suggest catching one of the lectures on the remainder of his current tour http://www.speakersfromtheedge.com/node/267
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