Did Shackleton ignore the risk to his ship?
When polar explorer Ernest Shackleton wrote in his diary on 27 October 1915: ‘She was doomed, no man-made ship could have withstood the strain,’ his dreams of reaching Antarctica had already been shattered. The HMS Endurance had been stuck in the Weddell Sea since January. By the end of October, the ice had torn off the rudder, shredded the keel, broken the deck beams in the engine room and punched holes in the side walls of the boat.
Polar explorer Ernest Shackleton’s failed Antarctic expedition is considered one of the greatest adventures of the 20th century. Shackleton wanted to be the first person to cross Antarctica. The Endurance was supposed to take Shackleton and his crew to the edge of the Antarctic ice, but was unexpectedly trapped by pack ice in the Weddell Sea.
The fact that all 28 crew members nevertheless made it to Elephant Island under the most adverse conditions and were rescued there in August 1916 is attributed not least to Shackleton’s courage and determination.
Did Shackleton accept the risk?
‘The Endurance lost its rudder, but that is not why the ship sank,’ writes engineer Jukka Tuhkuri in the journal Polar Research. ‘The Endurance would have sunk even if it had not had a rudder.’ Instead, the enormous pressure exerted on the hull by the pack ice tore open the keel.
The reason for this was that the Endurance was not designed to withstand such ice masses. And the most sobering claim for Shackleton’s admirers is that Shackleton knew this and accepted this risk for himself and his crew.
Tuhkuri substantiates his claims on the one hand with the construction plans for the Endurance and examples of several other ships, including the prominent barque Deutschland, the ship of the Second German Antarctic Expedition in 1911/1912. The author also draws on Shackleton’s diary entries and letters.
“Shackleton knew this. Before his departure, he lamented the ship’s weaknesses in a letter to his wife and said he would trade the Endurance for his previous ship at any time. In fact, during a visit to a Norwegian shipyard, he had recommended diagonal girders for another polar ship. That same ship was stuck in pack ice for months and survived,” says Tuhkuri.
Heiner Kubny, PolarJournal
