RWSE Day 25: Elephant Island

"Soon after we were hauling ashore the scant amount that was left of our stores and dragging our boats on to what appeared to us the promised land. We did not know Elephant Island then - that it was nothing more than a gigantic mass of rock, carrying
on its back a vast sheet of ice." ~~ excerpt from Endurance by Frank Worsley ~~ (from the Daily Program)

After Endurance sank on 21 November 1915, Shackleton and his men endured the hardships of living in ice floe camps and trudging across the ice in an attempt to reach land … unsuccessfully. With the ice floe they were on breaking apart, on 9 April 1916, they took to the three boats they had been man-hauling and set off for the nearest land they could find. Five harrowing days later, they reached Elephant Island.

Part of the South Shetland Islands, Elephant Island was far from an ideal place. It was bleak … it was barren … and it was far removed from shipping routes. With little hope of being rescued from the island, Shackleton set off in one of the boats with five of his men to seek help from the whaling stations on South Georgia Island … some 800 miles away.

The 22 men who remained on Elephant Island somehow managed to survive the perilous conditions until their rescue on 30 August 1916.

Our own trip to Elephant Island was nowhere near as difficult. Ortelius cleaved through the stormy waters overnight and brought us to this desolate piece of land in the early hours of the morning. It was overcast and foggy. It was cold. It was snowing. Swells crashed ashore in great splashes. And there was a katabatic wind coming down the peaks. In other words, typical conditions for Elephant Island.

Like Shackleton and his men did all those years ago, we rounded Cape Valentine, and made our way to Point Wild … where the 22 men clung to life while they awaited rescue.

EL Sara, went off with Allan and Tennessee, to scout out the conditions. It certainly seemed to us like we would be ship-bound. However, they found an area in the lee of the rocks where conditions were within operational parameters for a quick zodiac cruise … just long enough to get us close to shore to take a peek around the area and give us a glimpse of the monument to Captain Luis Pardo — of the Chilean Navy tug, Yelcho — who rescued Shackleton’s men.

The zodiac ride was bumpy … the swells about 6.5 feet. Once we passed through a narrow channel, conditions were better. The rock and boulder-strewn beach at Point Wild, where the 22 men lived in overturned boats, was filled with Chinstrap penguins and Antarctic fur seals. We got a decent view of the monument to Pardo … against a backdrop of blue glacier ice. Offshore, there were a couple of leopard seals hunting in the water … at least one hapless Chinnie was caught by one of the predators.

I had kept my fingers crossed that on this second visit to Elephant Island Mother Nature would be kinder to us. It wasn’t meant to be. But perhaps that wasn’t such a bad thing. We certainly got a feel for the conditions Shackleton’s men had to endure … not for a couple of hours like we did, but for four and a half months.Leggi altro