THEY call them "the frozen chosen", these mortals captivated by the Big White. Nose numbing, bone shuddering, finger bleeding cold is no obstacle to them. After all, in Antarctic temperatures, nothing really dies least of all the dreams of lost adventurers.
It was this bleak Irish January that Jarlath Cunnane couldn't face. At least that's why the Mayoman says he has gone south this month with six compatriots. The mission to photograph a few icebergs and king penguins and elephant seals, but only after he and his crew have put a pretty horrendous passage behind them.
For even now, some 80 years later, a re creation of an epic polar rescue is still a challenge. Even with the benefit of satellite navigation and weather faxes, the Southern Ocean is still a harsh and heartless sea. Eight decades ago, the crew of the 23 foot lifeboat James Caird, including three Irishmen, witnessed waves the like of which they had never seen. In a mercifully untamed element a small wooden boat can still be mercilessly tossed about.
The craft this time is the 23 foot Tom Crean, named after the Kerry member of the 1914-1917 British Trans Antarctic Expedition. Built last year in a shed in north Kilkenny by FAS trainees, it was launched off Tierra del Fuego in the Southern Ocean last weekend. Later this month, an Irish crew aims to sail an 800 mile route from Elephant Island to South Georgia, in a tribute to Crean, his expedition leader Sir Ernest Shackleton, Kinsale man Tim McCarthy, and the 25 other members of that original Trans Antarctic adventure.
The sea voyage may be the most difficult, but it is not the only challenge on this trip. South Aris, as this venture is called, aims to make the same 30 mile traverse over glaciers, snowfields and South Georgian mountains which Shackleton, Crean and Frank Worsley completed in May 1916. Adrenalin fuelled those efforts. Shackleton desperately needed to get help. He had 22 stranded crew members to think about after his ship, the Endurance, had been crushed in packice.
Widely acknowledged as one of the greatest polar survival stories, that rescue more than made up for failure to succeed with the original plan to cross the Antarctic continent. Shackleton - Kildare merchant seaman, master mariner and veteran of Scott's 1901 expedition - had led his own foray to the South Pole in 1907. He came within 97 miles of it, some 366 miles closer than previous attempts. In 1914, after Scott's death, he set out by ship from Plymouth for the southern latitudes, aiming to cross 1,800 miles from the Weddell to the Ross Sea.
This Quaker drank too much, he smoked too much, he liked the company of other men's wives; and his brother, Frank, was always suspected of involvement in the theft of the Irish crown jewels. He ha a sense of humour - as reflected in a message to the Royal Geographical Society after his 1907 trip, advising it to "book the Albert Hall" and "get the King".
With him when he set out in 1914 were 27 crew 23 Britons, an Australian, a New Zealander and two Irishmen. An Irish presence was not unusual in such latitudes. Edward Bransfield from Cork was the first man to sight the Antarctic continent, as acknowledged in the strait south of Elephant Island which bears his name. Tim McCarthy from Kinsale, Co Cork, had a brother, Mortimer, who served with Scott. Tim himself was a reservist in the British navy and a ship's carpenter, who was described by one of his expedition colleagues as a "big, brave smiling golden hearted man".
As for Tom Crean from Annascaul in Co Kerry, this petty officer in the British navy was making his fourth trip to the Antarctic. His first had been with Scott on Terra Nova in 1902, then with Shackleton on the Nimrod in 1907. He was also with Scott on his ill fated attempt on the South Pole in 1910. Such was his mettle that some believe Scott would have survived if he had chosen him for the select group making that final bid for the pole. Instead, it was Crean who found Scott's tent with three frozen bodies inside the following spring.
Some 5,000 replied to Shackleton's advertisement for crew, but war had broken out by the time the party was ready to weigh anchor. Two ships were due to serve as bases for the attempt the Norwegian built Endurance, which would make it to the Weddell Sea, and the Aurora, which was to carry another party to the Ross Sea on the other side. The British government granted £10,000 towards costs, while the main sponsor, Sir James Caird, gave Shackleton a cheque for £24,000.
But having read the order for general war mobilisation on August 4th 1914, Shackleton did the decent thing. He offered ships, stores and men to the British admiralty. Within an hour he had his response. Proceed" was the word, and Winston Churchill sent a telegram conveying his thanks. After all, international rivalry was fuelling wild adventure, with Africa on the detailed map, airplanes in the sky and national flags flying from both poles. Antarctica promised to be the new "El Dorado", for knowledge of it then was confined to the outer limits.
It was on January 19th, the following year, after a long journey down by South America, that the trouble began. Endurance was trapped in the packice. For the next nine months, ship and ice and crew drifted slowly north for about a thousand miles. From March to May, the sun didn't rise. It was the Antarctic winter, and temperatures sometimes plummeted compounded by fierce gales and blizzards - to minus 50 degrees.
On November 21st the ship finally broke up as gnarled fingers of ice smashed into its sturdy hull. By then, the crew had abandoned quarters, including the mess renamed the "Ritz Hotel". They were some 350 miles from the nearest land. Shackleton consoled his men with an extra half a sausage each for tea.
Tents, gear, dogs, sledges and three lifeboats were salvaged, along with several volumes of Encyclopaedia Britannica and packs of playing cards, and they retreated to an ice floe. Large sums of imaginary pounds were squandered on games of poker at Ocean Camp, while the encyclopaedia had several uses. Treated with saltpetre, the pages made ideal pipe lighter and cigarette paper material. Soon the tobacco would have to be substituted with seaweed.
On December 22nd they celebrated Christmas with what was to be their last decent meal for eight months: the menu was anchovies, baked beans and jugged hare. From then on, it would be seal meat - stewed, fried, fried and stewed. Worried about cracking ice, Shackleton rescued one man who had fallen into the sea in his sleeping bag just seconds before a potential crush.
He decided to drag the lifeboats on sledges across the floe, and to put to sea. Their course: Elephant Island to the north north west, at the tip of the 1,000 mile finger reaching up from Antarctica towards Cape Horn. At times they were carried in the wrong direction, and thirst was the constant battle. Having abandoned the pack ice so quickly, they had brought little stock.
They resorted to chewing raw seal meat. "This stayed our thirst as well as our ravenous hunger for a while," Commander Frank Worsley wrote in his famous account of the experience. It wasn't such a great idea, as mouths became more parched latterly. "Probably this was due to salt in the seals' blood."
On April 15th, 1916 they beached on Elephant Island at Valentine Point - the first dry land in 16 months. Shackleton had already resolved to try to reach the Norwegian whaling station in South Georgia, 800 miles away. He spent the next few days preparing one of the lifeboats, the James Caird, and building a camp for the 22 who would
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