Ernest Henry Shackleton autonomous existence. Great discoveries and travels: the story of the miraculous rescue of Ernest Shackleton's expedition from the Antarctic ice

Shackleton Ernest Henry (1874-1922), English Antarctic explorer. In 1901-1903 he was a member of R. Scott's expedition, in 1907-1909 he was the leader of an expedition to the South Pole (reached 88 degrees 32 minutes 19 seconds S, discovered a mountain range on Victoria Land, the Polar Plateau and the Beardmore Glacier). In 1914-1917, he led an expedition to the shores of Antarctica.

Shackleton Ernest Henry - Antarctic explorer. In 1901-1903 he participated in the expedition of R. Scott, in 1907-1909 he led an expedition to the South Pole (reached 88 degrees 32 minutes S, discovered a mountain range on Victoria Land, the Polar Plateau and the Beardmore Glacier). In 1914-1917 he led an expedition to the shores of Antarctica.

Shackleton, a scion of an old Irish family, was born in Kilkee House into the family of a doctor. His youth was spent at sea. Having learned about his son’s desire to become a sailor, Shackleton Sr. did not resist. When Ernst graduated from school, his father used his contacts to get his son a job as a cabin boy on the 1,600-ton clipper Hoghton Tower, which was setting off on a long voyage. In the last days of April 1890, Houghton Tower left the shores of England and headed across the Atlantic around the southern tip of America, Cape Horn, to the Chilean port of Valparaiso.

Sailing at Hoghton Tower became a harsh but excellent school for Shackleton. He served on the clipper ship for four years and made two long voyages

in Chile and one around the world.

Upon returning from his circumnavigation, Shackleton was able to easily pass the junior navigator exam and get a position as third mate on the Monmouthshire steamer of the Welsh Regular Line, which sailed to Japan, China and America.

On November 2, 1902, Scott, Wilson and Shackleton set off on three dog sleds to the Pole. They were accompanied by an auxiliary party for two weeks, but on November 15 it returned, and the pole party continued its journey south. The last day of 1902 found Scott's group at 82°15" south latitude, eight miles from the Western Mountains, opposite a valley that cut through the ridge to the west. Scott called it Shackleton's Passage. The path to the mountain range was blocked by an ice cliff.

Scott's group was forced to return. All three showed signs of scurvy. Shackleton coughed up blood.

Shackleton's health forced Scott to send him to England. What Shackleton considered a failure brought him fame that the recent navigator of the Carisbrook Castle had never dreamed of: he was the first to tell the world about the discoveries of Scott's expedition; he received the first laurels. Shackleton received the rank of naval lieutenant and a new assignment - to lead the preparation of an auxiliary expedition to free the Discovery, which was firmly frozen in the ice.

Shackleton did an excellent job: the expedition was equipped and sent on time. Later, she rescued Discovery from its icy shackles, and Scott's expedition returned to its homeland.

Shackleton's friend Beardmore (later Lord Invernairn) offered Shackleton a decently paid position as secretary of the technical committee in Glasgow. It was something like an experimental design bureau that was engaged in the creation of new types of economical gas engines.

Calm, measured service in the technical committee did not satisfy Shackleton, so the thought of a new trip to the South Pole increasingly fueled his ambition.

Shackleton presented a project for a new expedition in newspapers and then in the Geographical Journal. The challenge was issued. national heroes. However, no matter how significant the achievements of Shackleton and Scott were, the victory of the Norwegians, who were the first to reach the South Pole, hit the national pride of the British. To return the “offended” English flag to its former glory, a feat was required that would surprise the world and allow England to stake out new spaces on the ice continent in the name of the king. Shackleton took charge of this.

He intercepted the idea of Bruce and Filchner and came up with a project for a trans-Antarctic expedition. Enormous popularity and support from the ruling and financial circles of England helped Shackleton relatively easily obtain the necessary funds, and at the end of 1913 he began equipping a new expedition.

The expedition was divided into two independent detachments. Shackleton's main detachment departed on the sailing-steam ship "Endurance" into the Weddell Sea. The ship was supposed to land Shackleton's land party with dog sleds and a supply of food on the Prince Luitpold Coast. From here the party had to make the transition across the mainland: to the Pole - through absolutely virgin places , further, already to the north, along the familiar road - along the King Edward VII plateau, the Beardmore glacier, the Ross ice sheet to McMurdo Sound. By that time, the auxiliary detachment, setting off for the Ross Sea on the ship Aurora, was supposed to set up a base on the cape. Huts or Cape Evans and place food warehouses from the base to the Beardmore Glacier.

But Shackleton's luck ran out. First, the Endurance's sailing from England was almost disrupted by the outbreak of the first World War

. Then, on the way to the south, it turned out that the ship was not as strong as it seemed when purchased, and part of the crew, recruited from white-flyers in connection with the war, turned out to be of little use for polar navigation. But Shackleton's main trials lay ahead.

Only on April 15 did they reach the island of Mordvinov (Elephant). But was this salvation? There was no hope for outside help; we had to rely only on ourselves. Shackleton was faced with a dilemma: either send a boat with experienced people to South Georgia, where the whalers’ village was located, so that they would ensure that a rescue expedition was sent to the island, or everyone should stay here, trusting in the will of God. Shackleton chose the first, most difficult option, and undertook to implement it himself.

His brilliant project for a trans-Antarctic expedition clearly failed. Only at the beginning of 1917 did Shackleton manage to find and pick up the last seven members of the auxiliary detachment of the expedition at Cape Evans.

Despite all the failures that befell Shackleton, his expedition as a whole did a lot of useful things for science, expanding knowledge about the meteorological and ice regime, and the depths of the Weddell and Ross seas.

Shackleton turned his attention to the American North and began negotiations with the Canadian government about organizing an expedition that would explore the Beaufort Sea.

His proposal to send an oceanographic expedition to survey the coast of Antarctica in the African square - from Coats Land to Enderby Land - found support among the Lords of the Admiralty. And on September 24, 1921, the expeditionary schooner Quest had already sailed from Plymouth to the south. His old friends Wild, Worsley, McLean and McIlroy, the meteorologist Hussey, went on a long journey with Shackleton.

In the evening he returned to the ship, cheerful, happy that all preparations had been completed and that in the morning he could go south. Before going to bed, Shackleton, as usual, sat down to write his diary. “As dusk fell, I saw a lonely star rising above the bay, sparkling like a precious stone,” he wrote down the last phrase and went to bed... And at 3:30 a.m. on January 5, he died from an attack of angina pectoris. With the consent of the widow of the deceased, Shackleton's body was buried in Grytviken, at the tip of a cape jutting into the sea. And when "Quest" is on way back

from Antarctica again came to South Georgia, Shackleton's friends erected a monument on his grave - a cross crowning the top of a hill made of granite fragments.

Reprinted from the site Sir(English Ernest Henry Shackleton, February 15, 1874, Kilkee House, Kildare, Ireland - January 5, 1922, Grytviken, South Georgia) - Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer, a figure in the heroic age of Antarctic exploration. Member of four Antarctic expeditions, three of which he commanded.

The first experience of polar research was gained in the Discovery expedition, a participant in the first trip to the South Pole (latitude 82° 11’ was reached), after which he was evacuated for health reasons. In 1907, Shackleton led his own Nimrod expedition, during which he reached 88° 23" S, 97 geographical miles (180 km) short of the South Pole. For his achievements, he was knighted by King Edward VII.

After Amundsen (December 14, 1911) and Scott (January 17, 1912) reached the South Pole, Shackleton declared that crossing the entire Antarctic continent remained "the only great goal of Antarctic travel." In 1914 he organized the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. The voyage ended in disaster: before reaching the shores of Antarctica, the expedition ship Endurance was trapped by ice in the Weddell Sea and sank. Shackleton managed to save the entire crew without killing a single person, but his heroism and professional quality were not appreciated in Britain against the backdrop of the First World War. In 1921, he led the Shackleton-Rowett expedition, but even before its work began in Antarctica, he died of a heart attack at the age of 47 and was buried on the island of South Georgia.

Shackleton was a versatile personality, tried to run for the British Parliament, organized commercial enterprises, but was not successful in any of them. After his death, he was forgotten for some time, but in the middle of the twentieth century there was a surge of interest in Shackleton’s legacy, first in the USA and then in Great Britain. In 2002, during a national poll of the 100 Greatest Britons, Shackleton was ranked 11th, while Robert Scott was only 54th.

Family. Childhood and youth

Ernest Henry Shackleton was born in the barony of Kilkee House, about 48 km from Dublin, where his father was a landowner. Ernest was the second of ten children and the first son in the family. Father - Henry Shackleton (1847-1920), of Anglo-Irish origin (descendant of Quakers from Yorkshire), mother - Henrietta Letitia Sophia Gavan (1845-1929), came from County Kerry, her family is of Norman origin, they settled in Ireland from the XIII century. Since 1600, the Shackletons had their own coat of arms and the motto “By endurance we conquer.” One of Shackleton's distant ancestors was the famous navigator Martin Frobisher. E. Shackleton's younger brother, Frank (1876-1941), was arrested in 1907 on charges of stealing the Crown Insignia of the Order of St. Patrick, but acquitted.

In 1880, Henry Shackleton decided to change his life; leaving the ruined estate (Ireland was then experiencing a general decline Agriculture), he moved his family to Dublin, where he began to study medicine at Trinity College. In 1884, the Shackletons left Ireland and moved to the suburbs of London, where the head of the family hoped to find a rich practice (in total, G. Shackleton worked as a doctor for more than 30 years). Journalist and historian Roland Huntford has suggested that the Shackletons' Anglo-Irish origins may have played a role in the move, since in 1882 Irish nationalists assassinated Lord Cavendish, Secretary of State for Ireland, which led to worsening national tensions.

Ernest Shackleton developed an early love of reading, which stimulated his interest in adventure. He was raised and educated at home until the age of 11, and then was sent to a preparatory school in West Hill, Dulwich, southeast of London. At the age of 13, he entered Dulwich College, and never excelled in his studies. He had a calm disposition, but willingly got into fights if his classmates tried to say something about his origin or made fun of his Irish accent. He later recalled that he found it boring to study, and claimed that from school course he learned almost nothing about geography, and the study of literature was reduced to reading and analyzing passages from national poets and prose writers. However, Shackleton graduated fifth in his class of 31 students.

Sailing at Hoghton Tower became a harsh but excellent school for Shackleton. He served on the clipper ship for four years, made two long voyages to Chile and one around the world.

Upon return from circumnavigation Shackleton was able to pass the junior navigator exam without much difficulty and get a position as third mate on the Monmouthshire steamer of the Welsh Regular Line, which sailed to Japan, China and America.

In 1901, junior lieutenant Shackleton of the Royal Navy was already on duty on the bridge of the expedition ship Discovery of the British Antarctic Expedition, organized to explore the polar countries. The expedition was led by Captain R. Scott.

On November 2, 1902, Scott, Wilson and Shackleton set off on three dog sleds to the Pole. An auxiliary party accompanied them for two weeks, but on November 15 it returned, and the pole party continued its journey south. The last day of 1902 found Scott's group at 82°15" south latitude, eight miles from the Western Mountains, opposite a valley cutting through the ridge in a westerly direction. Scott called it Shackleton's Passage. The path to the mountain range was blocked by an icy cliff.

Scott's group was forced to return. All three showed signs of scurvy. Shackleton coughed up blood. Shackleton's health forced Scott to send him to England. What Shackleton considered a failure brought him fame that the recent navigator of the Carisbrook Castle had never dreamed of: he was the first to tell the world about the discoveries of Scott's expedition; he received the first laurels. Shackleton received the rank of naval lieutenant and a new assignment - to lead the preparation of an auxiliary expedition to free the Discovery, which was firmly frozen in the ice. Shackleton did an excellent job: the expedition was equipped and sent on time. Later, she rescued Discovery from its icy shackles, and Scott's expedition returned to its homeland.

Calm, measured service in the technical committee did not satisfy Shackleton, so the thought of a new trip to the South Pole increasingly fueled his ambition.

Shackleton presented a project for a new expedition in newspapers and then in the Geographical Journal. The challenge was issued.

On March 10, 1908, David, Mawson and four other companions of Shackleton first climbed to the top of Erebus (3794 meters) and reached the edge of an active volcano. In the spring (late October) Shackleton began a trip to the South Pole. However, being less than 180 kilometers from the Pole, on January 9, 1909, the detachment was forced to turn back due to a lack of supplies and strong winds. According to Shackleton's calculations, they traveled 2,750 kilometers round trip. The geographical results of the trip turned out to be very significant: several mountain ranges were discovered (including Queen Alexandra) with a total length of more than 900 kilometers, framing the Ross Ice Shelf from the south and west.

On June 14, 1909, England greeted Shackleton and his comrades as national heroes. However, no matter how significant the achievements of Shackleton and Scott were, the victory of the Norwegians, who were the first to reach the South Pole, hit the national pride of the British. To return the “offended” English flag to its former glory, a feat was required that would surprise the world and allow England to stake out new spaces on the ice continent in the name of the king. Shackleton took charge of this.

But Shackleton's luck ran out. First, the Endurance's sailing from England was almost disrupted by the outbreak of the First World War. Then, on the way to the south, it turned out that the ship was not as strong as it seemed when purchased, and part of the crew, recruited from white-flyers in connection with the war, turned out to be of little use for polar navigation. But Shackleton's main trials lay ahead.

In October 1915, the Endurance was crushed by ice and sank. People landed on the ice and set up camp. The ice floe continued to drift north. As long as there was enough food saved from the crushed ship, as long as it was possible to hunt seals, life on the ice floe was quite bearable. As winter approached, the expedition's situation worsened.

Shackleton turned his attention to the American North and began negotiations with the Canadian government about organizing an expedition that would explore the Beaufort Sea.

His proposal to send an oceanographic expedition to survey the coast of Antarctica in the African square - from Coats Land to Enderby Land - found support among the Lords of the Admiralty. And on September 24, 1921, the expeditionary schooner Quest already sailed from Plymouth to the south. His old friends Wild, Worsley, McLean and McIlroy, the meteorologist Hussey, went on a long journey with Shackleton.

On January 4, 1922, the Quest dropped anchor in Grytviken Bay near a familiar whaling village. Shackleton went ashore to see his old friends who had taken such an active part in the rescue of the Endurance expedition. In the evening he returned to the ship, cheerful, happy that all preparations had been completed and that in the morning he could go south. Before going to bed, Shackleton, as usual, sat down to write his diary. “As dusk fell, I saw a lonely star rising above the bay, sparkling like a precious stone,” he wrote down the last phrase and went to bed... And at 3:30 a.m. on January 5, he died from an attack of angina pectoris.

With the consent of the widow of the deceased, Shackleton's body was buried in Grytviken, at the tip of a cape jutting into the sea. And when the Quest, on its way back from Antarctica, again visited South Georgia, Shackleton’s friends erected a monument on his grave - a cross crowning the top of a hill made of granite fragments.

Stories of great discoveries and travels often end quite sadly: just remember the death of Robert Scott’s expedition on the way back from the South Pole, Roald Amundsen while searching for the expedition of Umberto Nobile, the story of the missing Franklin expedition.

There were also ugly stories - such as the conquest of the North Pole by either Piri or Cook.

But there were also amazing victories - the same expedition of Roald Amundsen to the South Pole, crossing Greenland on skis by Fridtjof Nansen.

And today I want to tell a story that shocked me as a child. This is the story of an expedition that only miraculously ended, although without the expected result, but with virtually no casualties. And I was prompted to talk about it by an article that I recently came across by chance. Here I will bring her summary, well, all the details and more than 50 photographs can be found. So, Sir Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Transantarctic Expedition.

In 1914, Ernest Shackleton placed an advertisement in all London newspapers that read:

“People are needed to take part in the risky journey. Small salary, piercing cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return is doubtful. If successful - honor and recognition. Sir Ernest Shackleton"

The South Pole had been reached several years earlier by Roald Amundsen, so Shackleton set himself a more ambitious goal: landing on Antarctica and crossing the entire Antarctic continent - 1,800 miles across the entire continent via the South Pole.

The expedition included two detachments on the ships Endurance and Aurora. Shackleton's group on the Endurance was supposed to approach the coast of the Weddell Sea, spend the winter in Fasel Bay and proceed to the South Pole the following Antarctic summer. The second detachment, based on about. Ross in McMurdo Sound, was supposed to lay down warehouses for the successful return of Shackleton's detachment.

The total number of applications to participate in the expedition exceeded 5,000, including from women. Ultimately, the team consisted of 56 people, 28 for each detachment, with some joining the expedition in last moment- in Buenos Aires and Sydney.

On February 21, 1915, the Endurance found itself at the southernmost point of its journey - 76° 58′ S. w. Shakalton's ship encountered an unexpectedly high density of ice floes. After more than two months of fighting, the Endurance became hopelessly icebound, then began to drift north.

On October 27, 1915, the ship was squeezed to its limit and Shackleton gave the order to abandon the Endurance. Supplies and three boats were unloaded onto the ice. For three days the crew fought for the life of the ship, pumping water from the holds at −27 °C. Photographer Hurley managed to save his photographic plates from the ship, but he had to leave only 120 of the best of them.

After a brief attempt at cruising, the crew set up camp on the ice, continuing to retrieve supplies and lifeboats from the Endurance until the ship finally sank completely on November 21.

After the failed second campaign, the “Patience Camp” was founded, where the team lived for more than 3 months. Soon food shortages began to be felt: everything that could be done without was left at the Ocean Camp. Harley and McLean were sent for food. On 2 February 1916, Shackleton sent a large detachment to retrieve more supplies and a third lifeboat, which had been abandoned. The basis of the diet was seal and penguin meat.

But due to the presence of many dogs, there was a desperate shortage of meat. Therefore, on April 2, the chief ordered the shooting of all remaining mounts.

On April 8, 1916, the ice floe on which the camp was located split in two, and Shackleton ordered lifeboats to board.

A five-day sea voyage through ice-choked waters brought the team to the island. Elephant, inhabited only by penguins and seals, separated the crew from the site of the Endurance's wreck by 346 miles. The drift and passage on the ice lasted 497 days. On April 14, they reached the southeastern coast of the island, but were unable to land due to steep cliffs and steep glaciers. On April 15, Shackleton reached the northern coast and discovered a narrow pebble beach on which people from all boats were able to land. It soon became clear that the tides are very high in these places and the harbor does not guarantee safety. On April 16, Wild and the crew of the Stancombe Wills explored the coast in search of a suitable harbor, which was discovered just 7 miles (11 km) away. The new camp was named Point Wild(“Cape Wild” and at the same time “Cape Wild”).

Elephant Island was a barren and uninhabited place, located far from shipping routes. Even British government– and in war time he has enough worries - he will send a rescue expedition, it is unlikely that anyone will look for the shipwrecked on a rock lost among the ice desert island. The search will first begin in the bays of the Weddell Sea, and in the meantime... Shackleton had no doubt that the search parties would not even think of looking there; this meant that the task of rescue from that moment on became the task of the team itself. It was possible to spend the winter on the island: although devoid of vegetation, it had plenty of fresh water, as well as seals and penguins as the main source of food and fuel.

“We can’t stay here,” said Shackleton. – The nearest inhabited land lies eight hundred miles to the northwest, that is, one and a half thousand kilometers. This is South Georgia. Whalers almost always winter there. But we can’t leave all together: the boats are too small. Several people will go with me in the whaleboat, and we will return for the rest in the whaler.

This distance had to be reached on a single boat in the conditions of the approaching polar winter. With luck, if the sea was ice-free and the boat crew survived, Shackleton expected to reach help in about a month.

To be precise, an even closer inhabited location was Port Stanley, which was 540 nautical miles (1,000 km) away, but the prevailing westerly winds made it virtually unreachable.

Of the Endurance's four boats, three are too small for such a long voyage. The only more or less suitable boat was loaded with supplies intended for the trans-Antarctic voyage: biscuits, food concentrates, milk powder and sugar. Fresh water was poured into two 18-gallon drums (one of which was damaged during loading). Food was prepared on two primus stoves. The James Caird was a whaling whaleboat without a deck. Its length reached 6.9 m. Carpenter McNishu made the boat more seaworthy, having only the property that the expeditioners had. He built up the sides and made a cover out of canvas that replaced the deck.

To achieve waterproofness, the seams were treated with seal blood mixed with oil paint. The Dudley Docker (another boat) had its mast removed and a false keel made of it, both to increase stability and to make the hull stronger. To improve stability, a “long ton” (1016 kg) of ballast was placed in the boat.

Shackleton took five people with him - Worsley (Captain Endurance), Crean (Antarctic veteran, proven on Scott's expeditions), Henry (Chippie) McNish, Tim McCarthy and John Vincent. The head of the detachment on the island. Elephant remained F. Wilde:

to whom Shackleton gave detailed instructions. If Shackleton did not return before the spring, the team had to try to get to Fr. Deception, also uninhabited, but located closer to the sea routes and wait for help there.

- In places! See you later. The crew sailed on April 24, 1916, with a favorable southwesterly wind.

The whaleboat rounds the cape with oars, then the sails are raised on the masts. Those remaining on the shore wave after the departing boat.

Having gone out to sea, the ship had to deviate from its direct course due to the presence of ice fields. During the first day, in a force 9 storm, we managed to cover 45 nautical miles (83 km). Because of the storm, the crew had to stay awake, there were difficulties with changing watches, and polar clothing was not suitable for sea voyage and it was impossible to dry it. On April 29, the weather deteriorated sharply, the temperature dropped, and the waves threatened to capsize the boat. I had to drift for 48 hours, while the gear and “deck” had to be continuously cleared of ice. By May 4 they were already 250 nautical miles from South Georgia.

A whaleboat is a stable sea vessel with excellent seaworthiness. Shackleton's two-sail boat climbs the slopes of water giants, the sight of which gives horror to a person far from the sea; when it finds itself on the crest of a wave, its bottom is half exposed, and it seems that the whaleboat is about to capsize. But no, the stern settles, the whaleboat sits on the wave and slides down, as if along an ice slide. And he climbs up again. The whaleboat easily passes the reefs - either carried away by the whirlpools, or passing over them on the crest of a wave. After a while, the people sitting in the whaleboat do not so much calm down, but simply begin to understand that they have the ability to withstand any adversity.

But the whaleboat has no deck. Splashes of water - or even the entire crest of the wave - fall inside, and within an hour everyone is soaked through. In addition, during the entire journey, both day and night, it is necessary to bail out water. The provisions got wet - wet people eat food soaked in water. Eating and drinking on this swing is not so pleasant, and the discharge of natural needs puts sailors in a simply dangerous position - friends have to hold you tightly so that you do not fall overboard. Nobody pays attention to titles. “Come on, captain. I'm holding you." Then authority and respect did not suffer during travel.

Day gives way to night, which looks more like roaring black chaos. People take turns bailing out water and sleeping. Man has amazing adaptability. After three or four sleepless nights spent in anxiety, people, overwhelmed with fatigue, sometimes give up bailing out the water, lie down on the bottom and, in their thoroughly wet clothes, huddling together to retain the slightest particle of warmth, fall into a deep sleep. From the fury of the elements they seem to become dull - thought becomes heavy and clumsy; only the dawning consciousness that you are still alive, and the boat is going in the right direction. I think every sailor says secret prayers that are carried away by the fierce wind.

Shackleton sleeps less than others, or rather hardly sleeps at all. His account of this voyage (South, the Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition) gives little detail about how he managed to stay on track. In rare moments of lucidity, he was able to make astronomical observations and calculate his location. The whaleboat sailed in a straight line from Mordvinov Island (Elephant Island) to the western tip of South Georgia. And finally, the chilled sailors saw a snow-capped peak on the horizon.

The team was 280 km from the whaling base (if you sail along the coast), however, judging by the condition of the boat, it was impossible to overcome this distance. Vincent and McNish were on the verge of life and death, so Shackleton, Worsley and Crean decided to go for salvation through the mountains - to the whaling base of Stromness.

On May 18, three men set out for the mountains, the first ever crossing of the South Georgia interior. The hike was also very difficult because the travelers did not have maps, and they constantly had to go around glaciers and mountain cliffs. Without any equipment, without sleep, they reached Stromness in 36 hours, and looked, according to Worsley, “like a trio of terrible scarecrows.” When they saw Grytviken with its dark huts, smoke, rude sailing ships on gray water, it seemed to them that they were in heaven. The Norwegians greeted them joyfully, and a lot of vodka was drunk in honor of the successful completion of the campaign. That same day, 19 May, the Norwegians sent a motor launch to evacuate McCarthy, McNish and Vincent and pick up the James Caird.

But twenty-two people were waiting on the island for Mordvinov with provisions for only a few weeks.

Any captain was ready to go to the rescue. Just three days after arriving in Stromness, Shackleton, aboard the whaler The Southern Sky, attempted to rescue those remaining on the island. Elephant team. In May, the field of pack ice did not allow approaching the island closer than 110 km, and the whaler was not suitable for swimming in ice. Shackleton retreated and departed for Port Stanley.

Shackleton managed to enlist the support of the British ambassador in Uruguay, and received a trawler from the country's government, on which on June 10 he made a second attempt to get to the island. Elephant, again unsuccessful. Then Shackleton, Crean and Worsley sailed to Punta Arenas, Chile, where they met with the British shipowner MacDonald. On July 12, a third attempt was made on MacDonald's schooner Emma to save the crew: pack ice again prevented the ship from reaching the coast.

By that time - mid-August - Shackleton had had no information about his team for more than three months. The Chilean government has provided a steam tug at the disposal of the polar explorer Yelcho, already participating in the third rescue attempt as a support vessel.

Those shipwrecked, frozen and hungry on the island of Mordvinov did not lose hope. They knew that the captain had not abandoned them to their fate. And they were sure that he did not die: his knowledge, energy, and strength spoke for him. He always knew what he was doing, and had saved them from death more than once on this expedition; to them he was a superman. Shackleton must come for them even in the darkness of the Antarctic night - they believed in him as in God. On August 25, the fourth attempt began. And when smoke appeared on the horizon above the gray sea strewn with icebergs (it was August 30, 1916), they realized that their expectations had not been deceived: all the participants in the winter on the island. Elephant boarded Yelcho. The entire team arrived in Punta Arenas on September 3, 1916.

The position of the people of the Ross Sea team turned out to be much more difficult.

Winter storms carried away the schooner Aurora, which drifted in the ice for 312 days and returned to New Zealand with great difficulty (the seams of the lining came apart and the rudder was broken). The people who remained on Ross Island almost repeated Scott's fate - having laid warehouses to Mount Hope, on the way back they were stopped by a snow storm at a short distance from the supply warehouse. However, the party members had the courage to reach him and escape, spending 198 days in the field (Scott’s team in 1912 died on the 144th day in in full force). This operation cost the life of one member of the team - E. Spencer-Smith, who died on the way from scurvy and exhaustion. The head of the party, E. McIntosh, and its member, Victor Hayward, allegedly fell through the ice in May 1916, already at the wintering base. You can read more about the difficult trials that befell them, which turned out to be even more tragic than those of the first team, on the Wiki.

John King Davis, who served on Mawson's expedition and refused Shackleton's offers to participate in the Imperial expedition, was appointed commander of the rescuers. Davis, however, took Shackleton as a supernumerary officer and put to sea on 20 December 1916, reaching Ross Island on 10 January 1917.

The team at Cape Evans expected to see Shackleton on the other side of the world, people were disappointed by the futility of efforts and deaths. On January 20, the Aurora left for New Zealand, carrying seven survivors on board. On 9 February everyone returned to Wellington.

Unfortunately, unlike Fridtjof Nansen, also a great traveler and explorer who devoted himself to serving peace and justice, Shackleton did not distinguish himself in anything special in the future, rather the opposite. Subsequently, he was given the temporary rank of major and sent - first to Spitsbergen to study the possibility of British annexation of the archipelago: the mission was carried out under the guise of a geological expedition; and then - as part of a military mission to Murmansk. Service on the sidelines did not satisfy him; in one of his letters he complained that “he cannot find himself if he is not among the storms in wild lands" In February 1919, Shackleton returned to London with a development project natural resources Northern Russia in cooperation with the local white government. The failure of foreign intervention led to the collapse of these plans. However, for his participation in the intervention he was elevated to the rank of Officer of the Order of the British Empire.

And yet, back in 1921, Apsley Cherry-Garrard, who accompanied Robert Scott, wrote in the preface to his memoirs “The Most Terrible Journey” about organizing an ideal Antarctic expedition:

In the field of science and geographical exploration I need Scott, for a journey in the polar winter - Wilson, for a lightning dash to the Pole - Amundsen; but if I find myself in the devil's mouth and want to get out of it, I will not hesitate to call on Shackleton.

People capable of such achievements are always out of this world. Not everyone can be a Nansen or a Heyerdahl, and even they had plenty of their own cockroaches, if you look into it. But they deserve respect and eternal human memory for their achievements forever.

Exactly one hundred years ago, on October 27, 1915, the team of British explorer Ernest Shackleton landed on the ice of Antarctica. The ship sank, but the people made a desperate attempt to escape - and survived. The full history of this expedition can be found in the books"Lost in the Ice" And "Leadership on the Ice".A few facts from them:

On August 8, 1914, Ernest Shackleton and his brave team set off, planning to cross the endless snow of Antarctica. This journey was destined to become the last expedition of the golden age of polar exploration.

Shackleton planned to reach Antarctica and pass through the South Pole, but on January 18, 1915, the ship, before reaching its goal, got stuck in a dense accumulation of ice debris

The crew is trying to clear a path for the ship.

Gradually, the ice floes tilted the ship thirty degrees. At some point, one of the ice floes broke through the ship’s hull, and water poured into the hold. It was unsafe to remain on the ship. The order to land on the ice came on October 27, 1915 at five o'clock in the evening, although most of the expedition members by this time already understood that the ship would sink. People fought for it - and lost.

The ship sank on November 21. The team members had to get used to a new reality of constant inconvenience, endless dampness and inevitable cold. The travelers’ new home was the “Ocean” camp, which they set up not far from the ship. Travelers who left South Georgia almost a year ago were left adrift on the ice floe.

The crew drags a lifeboat across the ice after the ship sank.

On December 23, Shackleton and his crew packed up their equipment and left Camp Ocean in search of more reliable ice. The team spent the next three and a half months in the Patience camp on an ice floe that was drifting to the northwest. However, the ice floe became more and more unreliable every day, and on April 9, the crew members had to transfer to lifeboats. A week later they landed on the deserted Elephant Island.

Shackleton took several people with him and went by boat for help. After 16 days they managed to reach the whaling base on South Georgia Island. It took another three months to reach Elephant Island and evacuate the remaining crew members.

You can read more about Ernest Shackleton's heroic expedition and the courageous people who managed to survive in extreme conditions in these books: "Lost in the Ice" And "Leadership on the Ice".

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