Endurance Part Six (ch. 1-3)

The James Caird

While the twenty-two men on Elephant Island endured the weather, Shackleton and his crew of six men were battling the freezing sea. The men were immediately delighted to be on this journey in search of rescue, but that only lasted a few days. In this section, I noticed some evidence of an omniscient narrator. The author shows insights into Worsley's and McNeish's feelings when he quotes their logs. McNeish's read: " 'Then we are in the open sea wet through but happy through it all.' " McNeish wrote that log on April 24th which was the day they left Elephant Island. McNeish felt that the journey was bearable at that point because of the potential reward of reaching South Georgia which lay almost 870 miles away from their position. Shackleton's confidence begins to deteriorate again. He wonders if his decision to split up the party was the best choice. "The truth was that he felt rather out of his element... the struggle against the sea is an act of physical combat, and there is no escape."

This diagram helps show what a sea anchor looks like

Water provided a great deal of discomfort, but it also presented a problem of sinking. It had to be bailed if the water level was too high; however, their biggest fear was ice. If even a single collision occurred, they would end up swimming to South Georgia. Sleeping conditions were miserable because the men would have to sleep on the rocks needed to balance to boat. In addition, the waves were enormous which created much rocking in the boat. There was some good news though. They had covered 238 miles in their first six days which put them about a third of the way to South Georgia. To prevent more water from entering the boat, Shackleton created a sea anchor out the canvas they had. The sea anchor help raise the bow of the boat up into the waves, and it helped block some of the water; however, this presented another problem in itself. Ice was building up on the bow and on the sea anchor. The men would have to take turns chipping away at the ice with an axe in order to prevent the ice from weighing down the boat. Then a big wave hit, and the sea anchor was torn away.