Orde-Lees' account of abandoning Endurance, October 27, 1915
Things have taken a terribly serious turn - our worst fears are realized, not that we are in any way downhearted, for whilst there's life, there's hope.
Hitherto I have written of pressure as a sort of abstract manifestation of ice movement - even criticizing it, often flippantly.
We have seen so much around us and our stout little craft has out ridden so many of these glacial convulsions that we had become over-confident of her invulnerability.
To have her literally torn asunder beneath our feet as she has been today has come as a rude shock which the consequent discomforts will do little to mitigate.
The ice around the ship had been working all day; the ship merely forming a portion, as it were, of an immense pressure ridge. It is part & parcel of it. If the ship were not where it is the space occupied by it would be filled with great blocks of crumpled floe ice. As it is, this very ice is straining all the while to oust the ship & occupy its place whilst the ship, crushed laterally to the utmost limit of compression, resists the onslaught valiantly and , by intermittent rising, deflects the great rugged edges of the impinging floes so that they either pass noisily underneath her, lifting her a good deal in so doing, or else they bend upward & snap off in huge slab-like blocks six or seven feet thick and weighing as many tons.
In this latter case the blocks are often pushed high up the ship's side before they finally topple over backwards on to the oncoming ice and they nearly always cause the ship to list over to one side or the other.
Pressure had been going on spasmodically all day.
The carpenter was working hard at the cofferdam and pumping employed all hands. We were only just able to keep pace with the leakage. Down aft one could hear the ominous sound of the in-rushing water.
Our little ship was stove in, hopelessly crushed & helpless amongst the engulfing ice.
Nothing that we could do for her was any more good and as before our eyes she commenced to settle down first by the bows then by the stern, we bade her good bye with our hearts. Having accomplished its deadly mission the ice seemed then to play with her like a cat with a mouse, now hoisting her a little now letting her subside once more and as if to having wrested from us our stronghold dangled it before us, as it were, in mocking irony.
The forces of nature had made their counter attack and had driven us out from our position but thoughts of surrender never entered our heads.
Our immediate action lay in making preparations for a safe retirement.
The only question was not what was the best thing to be done but what was the next best thing to be done.
To few is it vouchsafed to see so impressive a sight. Confident as we were of the future such a calamity could not fail to evoke some emotion in the stoutest heart. Even Wild as courageous a man as there is amongst us admitted that it gave him a pain in the stomach to behold it.
For the first time we realized that we were face to face with as serious a one of the gravest disasters that can befall a polar expedition, beside which mere besetment is a bagatelle.
For the first time it came home to us that we were wrecked - that we had abandoned our ship; but we were not beaten. Britishers do not suffer defeat so easily as that.
At one time we expected every minute to see the last of her but strange to say she did not sink.
After settling down so far as to flood all her holds she remained fixed in the ice, well down but by no means entirely submerged.
By 8:30 p.m. everything necessary for our proposed sledging journey to either Robertson Island, Snow Hill Island or Paulet Island ___ miles away respectively, was out on the floe and then, in spite of the danger, we all went on board to have our last square meal - Beauvais pemmican soup, bread, jam, cocoa, tinned fruit and cream.
The cook stuck manfully to his post (in the intervals of quietude) lighting and extinguishing it each time for fear of the stove breaking loose & setting fire to the ship.
I went down into the forehold to get up the best things I could find but the water was then four feet deep and many cases were afloat and it was as much as I could do to squeeze in and get out the few articles we had for supper.
We did not let things depress us and even contrived to be merry. Dr. McIlroy was especially cheerful and made one of the usual type of Antarctic puns. "Let's have all we can eat today, Colonel," he said, "for tomorrow we diet." "At what time tomorrow do we die at?", I replied. Rather sinister under the circumstances perhaps, but better than being down-hearted anyhow.
Sir Ernest is now confronted with as big a problem as he has, I suppose, ever tackled: how to extricate us from this serious dilemma and ensure reaching civilization with the whole party alive & well.
As above indicated his intentions are to make over the ice, with two boats on runners and all the dog sledges, for one of the three nearest islands.
It will be a big & strenuous job but he hopes to make 5 miles a day. I cannot but help think that this is altogether too sanguine an estimate over such a hummocky surface intersected everywhere with great pressure ridges. Without the boats it would be quite possible, but such unwieldy loads cannot but be a serious impediment.
The ship now has a 25 degree list. At midnight there was 6 ft. of water in the lower hold when I went down to my cabin in the mainhold for the last time to secure my boxes and penates, a waterproof sheet to sleep on & one or two other oddments, and the lateral pressure was so great that the deck had literally burst under the strain and the planks were all starting up like so many matches pushed out of a box.
The tents were first erected on the port side of the ship, but just as we were turning in the floe began to split up and we hurriedly struck camp and moved everything over a pressure ridge to the other side of the ship & finally turned in dead beat at 1 a.m.
About 4 p.m. came the beginning of the end. ...
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