Meanwhile, Shackleton’s support party had been enduring equally harrowing conditions on an ultimately futile quest.
On 24 December 1914, when Endurance was navigating ice in the Weddell Sea, Aurora had sailed from Hobart, Tasmania, with Aeneas Mackintosh in command of 27 men and 26 dogs.
Aurora at Winter quarters at Cape Evans
Mt. Erebus, Ross Island
Pack pressing in near Cape Evans
Barne Glacier looking north west from Cape Evans
They headed for Ross Island in McMurdo Sound in the Ross Sea, where they planned to use their ship and huts built for previous expeditions as a base for sledging trips in spring and summer.
Aeneas Mackintosh, Arnold Spencer-Smith and Harry Ernest Wild starting on a depot laying journey to the Bluff. January, 1915. Irvine Gaze photographer, courtesy Canterbury Museum, Gaze Collection
Pulling fully loaded sledges by man-hauling or with dogs was gruelling, especially as the expedition was under-prepared and poorly equipped. Over two seasons, they would have to haul their own supplies and lay stores for Shackleton’s crossing party every degree of latitude – every 60 nautical miles (110 kilometres) – to Mount Hope, more than 700 kilometres away at the foot of Beardmore Glacier, 83° 37’S, and then return.
Map of Aurora's arrival
Map of Ross Island and sledge tracks
Mackintosh’s instructions from Shackleton were to immediately begin laying supplies since his party was expected to cross either that summer or the next from the Weddell Sea coast. On New Year’s Eve they unloaded stores at the Macquarie Island wireless station and sent their last letters to ‘wives and sweethearts’. One week later the crew saw their first sea ice while listening to the tenor Caruso on the ship’s gramophone. On 24 January, 16 kilometres from Hut Point, Aurora could go no further in the ice.
Camp on Great Ross Ice Barrier, 1915.
In blizzard conditions the four sledging parties, each of three men, set off straight away to lay supplies to 80°S, in depots at 79° and then 80°, that first summer, pulling up to 650 kilograms of rations assisted by their dog teams and a motor sledge. The motor sledge proved useless and one team turned back quite early. For the remaining teams, progress was excruciatingly slow; at times they sank to their waists in the snow. One day they made two kilometres, another 20 kilometres, another nothing.
The blizzard still raging. Went outside to feed the dogs. The force of the wind was so great that it was almost impossible to lean against it, the force was in the vicinity of 80–100 mph. It is a miracle how the tent stands the strain. The dogs are completely buried … it took us over two hours to release them. (Andrew Jack journal, 22 February 1915)
Ernest Joyce and Andrew Keith Jack. Photograph: Andrew Keith Jack (1885-1966). Courtesy State Library of Victoria, H82.45/28
On 20 February they reached 80° South and built a food and fuel depot marked by a 4 metre cairn and bamboo flag pole. Ernest Joyce wrote:
Typical Sledging routines involved rising at 5am: one pint pemmican biscuits tea, bfast in bags (cook up early); dry clothes finnesko against skin 6-6.45 down camp, pack secure sledges, harness dogs dig out of snow
The rudimentary Hut Point hut, used as a sledging base and built in 1902 as a stores hut for Scott
The commodious Cape Evans Hut, built in 1911 for Scott
Except for a few back at the hut, the dogs – poorly conditioned and not yet acclimatised – all died on the trek. The men, too, suffered on the 300-kilometre return march. In temperatures of minus 35°C, hungry, swollen from frostbite or scurvy, they had to raid the depots just laid.
More setbacks hit the party. The sledging teams, having split, returned at different times. When one party arrived back at Hut Point, three other men had been picked up by the ship and taken back to Cape Evans. The two groups were separated by 25 kilometres of sea ice.
Depot and abandoned sledge. Courtesy State Library of Victoria, H82.45/32
The Hut Point men finally crossed the sea ice to reunite with their fellow expeditioners at Cape Evans, 2 June 1915. There they discovered that Aurora had been torn from its moorings a month earlier, on the night of 6 May. Not only had they lost their ship but also most of their sledging equipment, stores and rations. Their task was now all the more difficult.
Scientist Andrew Keith Jack observed the Aurora Australis on 6 June 1915.
Undaunted, the men settled in to prepare for the next spring/summer sledging season, scavenging, repairing, recycling, improvising and killing seals and penguins – all the time unaware of Aurora’s fate or that of the Endurance itself, still stuck in the ice.
Labour in hut as follows – Mackintosh does good deal writing & odd jobs. Joyce and Wild making clothing of canvas & getting gear ready for next season’s sledging. They also give hand at getting in ice & doing odd jobs. Stevens has done a good deal of cooking since we landed. Smith & Cope also assisting in this. Cope also does some little biology but not very much. Gaze & Hayward keep hut supplied with blubber & do odd jobs too. Richards and self devote whole time to meteorology & our specific work.
The scientists found their purpose improvising equipment to continue their work. Andrew Keith Jack spent days grinding a silver mirror for a micrometre to measure dust samples.
Sunday 6th June 1915 Spent all day grinding and polishing
Monday 7th June Changed charts & made up averages and graphs with Richards. Aurora visible today & also distinct glow to N. effect of sun and moon combined.
Andrew Keith Jack’s diary, 24 January-27 June 1915. Courtesy State Library of Victoria, Estate of Andrew Keith Jack.
Aurora in McMurdo Sound waiting for break-up of the ice. Keith Jack 1885-1966, photographer. Courtesy State Library of Victoria, Estate of Andrew Keith Jack, 1967, H82.45/26
Meanwhile, aboard Aurora, second-in-charge Joseph Stenhouse was in command of the stricken ship and 17 crew. As the winter darkness closed in, the frozen Aurora drifted helplessly in the large ice floe, unknowingly an eerie companion to Endurance on the other side of the continent.
All hands have been employed today getting snow on board… as the ice may break away at any time we require a good supply of fresh water to bring us back to port. Three very large bergs were sighted today, open water can be seen ahead (but how far it extends we have no means of ascertaining)…the sun set at 3.15pm, the Aurora Australis rose from the horizon in the NNE…
Paton, 10 August 1915 [in McIlrea and Harrowfield 136]
After nine months beset, Aurora cleared the ice, set sail, raised steam and limped north with a jury-rigged rudder. It arrived in Otago, New Zealand, on 3 April 1916 to cheering crowds, after 11 months adrift. Its reappearance made headlines.
The fate of the sledging party
The Mount Hope sledging party. From left: Victor Hayward, Ernest Joyce, Harry Ernest Wild and Richard Richards, with dogs Gunner and Towser. Unidentified photographer. Courtesy Canterbury Museum, Ernest Edward Mills Joyce Collection
Unknown to Aurora were the fates of the other expedition parties. Shackleton was at that time launching the boats from the disintegrating ice camp in the Weddell Sea, while the sledging parties back on Ross Island had successfully laid depots inland to Mount Hope, still thinking that Shackleton would cross that season.
Leader Aeneas Mackintosh suffering from scurvy on the return journey from Mt Hope, 1916. Unidentified photographer. Courtesy Canterbury Museum
Their efforts came at great cost. They suffered horrendous blizzards, scurvy, snow blindness and starvation. One team turned back when their stove failed and three of the six remaining men suffered exhaustion and scurvy. One of the team, Reverend Spencer-Smith, died on the return journey north only a short march from a depot. Ernest Joyce wrote in his diary:
Glancing across the tent noticed to my surprise the Padre’s head lay out of his bag… – 35°. He appeared to be asleep, the ice had formed on his beard. Richy said. ‘I think he’s gone, Jocey.’ I examined him. To my sorrow and distress, he had already passed along the road to the Great Unknown. He had been sick indeed for 57 days, over 40 of which he was carried on the sledge.
Ernest Joyce, 9 March 1916, p. 170
Expedition leader Mackintosh and fellow sledging party member Victor Hayward, in failing health, were hauled by sledge to Hut Point, where they recuperated on a diet of fresh penguin and seal meat and hut stores, including blackberry jam. They later set out across the sea ice to return to Cape Evans against the advice of their companions, and were never seen again.
Later that winter of 1916, eventually reunited at Cape Evans, with no leader and no urgency, the seven survivors fell into daily routines of hunting, collecting ice for water, taking meteorological and tidal observations, reading and listening to the gramophone.
Gaze brought load of stores and eggs from [Cape] Royds this afternoon and we had what to me is the most civilised dinner for nearly two years … fresh-boiled [penguin] eggs, and [penguin] bacon. (Andrew Jack, diary entry, 17 November 1916)
It could not be until the summer that a rescue ship might come.
The sledging party hauls Spencer-Smith on a sledge on the return march from Mt Hope, 1916. Ernest Joyce photographer, courtesy Canterbury Museum, Ernest Edward Mills Joyce Collection
