264 



DISCOVERY 



there will be a general readjustment of the pieces 

 before steady motion in the new direction is possible. 



There seems to be little doubt that readjustment of 

 the floes during change of wind is one of the chief 

 causes of screwing pack and pressure in the open sea. 



As a result of the processes described above, the 

 ice surrounding our ship became extremely uneven. 

 Pressure-ridges of all sizes covered the surface, from 

 the newly formed ridge with its blocks square and 

 sharp-cut, to the old ridge of several seasons, with its 

 outlines softened and rounded by the snow. 



The wind formed long snowdrifts in the lee of all 

 the hummocks, often several feet high and many yards 

 in length, rising to a sharp whale-back, which stretched 

 away from the obstacle causing it in extraordinarih' 

 beautiful curves. Level surfaces of snow were very 

 rare, and marching with loaded sledges was a matter 

 of great difficulty. On a sunny day the cavities be- 

 tween the blocks, which were often filled with icicles, 

 shone with a wonderful lustrous blue, while during 

 the long hours of sunset light in the winter and spring, 

 the delicate tints of the snow surface — pink, grey, or 

 dove-colour — were a never-failing source of delight. 



How the " Endurance " was Crushed 



But the position of a ship frozen into pack-ice in 

 which constant pressure is going on is very precarious. 

 Towards the end of the winter, when the ice became 

 very lively, it was plain enough that the chances of 

 the Endurance escaping unscathed were few. The 

 end came on October 27, 1915, by which time the 

 ship had reached lat. 69° S. She became involved 

 in an area of very bad pressure, and was finally 

 crushed and had to be abandoned. The party formed 

 a camp on the ice and continued to drift north. 

 Summer was approaching, and the temperature was 

 becoming higher again, so that the smaller pieces into 

 which the ice was broken by the disturbances to which 

 it had been subjected did not freeze together again. 

 To this may be attributed the fact that, after the 

 beginning of November, pressure became very un- 

 common, at all events within the radius of observation 

 from the camp. The ice-floes were probably small 

 enough to accommodate themselves to changes of 

 motion without great pressure. 



A Camp on Drifting Ice 



But although the floes were no longer frozen to- 

 gether, they still kept too close for us to be able to 

 take to the boats, for the ice was now approaching 

 the projecting hook of the Graham Land Peninsula, 

 and was thus unable to spread out. The drift con- 

 tinued during the summer months of December, 



January, and February. Seals and penguins, which 

 had been rare during the winter, again appeared in 

 large numbers in the leads, while whales of various 

 kinds were frequent visitors to a large pool which lay 

 near the camp. At the end of March 1916 the ice- 

 floes bearing the tents passed within sight of Joinville 

 Island and continued on their way across Bransfield 

 Strait. Once to the north of Joinville Island the ice 

 began to break up rapidly ; it became exposed to a 

 slight sweU from the open sea, the large floes cracked 

 parallel to the crests of the swell, twisted round, and 

 cracked again, and soon became uncomfortably small 

 for a camp. 



The drift had been steadily to the north ever since 

 the crushing of the ship, for seven degrees of latitude, 

 or about 490 miles, but in the middle of Bransfield 

 Strait, about sixty miles south of Elephant Island, the 

 floes began to drift rapidly to the east, and there 

 seemed every prospect that we should be carried 

 out to sea, to the leeward of the most easterly of the 

 South Shetland Islands, before the ice opened out 

 enough for any boat-work to be possible. But on the 

 9th of April the opening came, and six days later we 

 made a landing on Elephant Island, whence Sir Ernest 

 Shackleton started on his historic journey to South 

 Georgia, to obtain relief for the rest of the party, 

 which remained on the island until his return on 

 August 30. 



This article is concerned only with one aspect of 

 the boat-journey to Elephant Island. During these 

 days we were able to observe the last stages in 

 the decay of the pack. Throughout the drift there 

 had been remarkably little decay of the floes. Some 

 melting had gone on below the water during the 

 warmer months, and the surface snow had softened 

 to a small extent, but on the whole the ice ap- 

 peared very much the same in April 1916 as it had 

 done in April 1915. But once it was exposed to 

 the action of the ocean swell in Bransfield Strait, 

 the disintegration was astonishingly rapid. The 

 camp floes were already onlj^ fortj' or fifty yards 

 square when the party left them, and during the 

 boat-journey similar floes, packed together in long 

 streams, were passed. On the sides of these streams 

 which were exposed to the open sea, rapid destruc- 

 tion was going on ; the ice above the water-line and a 

 foot or so below it was being eaten away, the remaining 

 portions of the floe taking on fantastic forms, some 

 of them of a strange beauty, while the sea was strewn 

 with ice-debris of all kinds. 



The ice had been under observation for a period of 

 fifteen months, during which time it had drifted over 

 1,200 miles ; how far it had come before the Endur- 

 ance was caught in it it is impossible to say, but the 

 end of the long journo\' was now reached. 



