SOUTH.*
SIR ERNEST SILICKLETON'S last expedition to the South Polar regions sailed, by direct order of the Admiralty, in the first
week of the war, and returned to civilization late in 1916, when the nation was absorbed in watching the battle of the Somme. The leader and his comrades took part in• the later stages of the war, and some of them were killed. The account of their work which has at length appeared will thus-come fresh to most readers, who may be excused for forgetting a Polar expedition
in the last few strenuous years. Curiously enough, a Russian party was at work during the early part of the war in the Arctic, and achieved a remarkable feat by sailing from the Pacific along the north coast of Siberia to Archangel. Commander Vilkitsky, the hero of this historic episode, has attracted even less notie
than Sir Ernest Shackleton in the Antarctic. It may be re- membered that Sir Ernest Shackleton's design was to mare:t across the South Polar continent from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea, visiting the South Pole on his way to the familiar winter quarters in Victoria Land, used by himself and by tie late Captain Scott. The plan was most ambitious, for it included
a landing on a wholly unexplored coast and s march of at lea-..t 1,800 miles over frozen wastes. The first half of the route In
through unknown country, probably mountainous. The land party of seven men, with dogs. and motor-sledges, had to depend on their own efforts until they reached the depots which an auxiliary party, starting from the other' side of the Polar con- tinent, were to establish at intervals up to three hundred mile., from the Ross Sea. It would be rash to say that such a mare'n was impossible, for resolute men like the author delight in triumphing over difficulties ; but the journey would have been attended with the gravest risks, not so much on account of the .
distance to be traversed as because the South Polar region: are swept by incessant storms of great violence. Captain Scott and his companions perished within a few miles of safety bemuse they had been delayed by storms until they were exhausted. Had. Sir Ernest Shackleton and his companions been storm- bound somewhere near the South Pole,. they would have been.
in a desperate plight. However, the plan failed at the outset. The expedition in the Endurance' was unable to land at the southern end of the Weddell Sea on or near the coast discovered by Dr. W. S. Bruce, and, after being frozen in and wrecked., was saved by a succession of miracles which it is the main business of this book to record.
The Weddell Sea, south-east of Cape Horn, is an evil place for ships. Vast fields of pack-ice move round the sea under the influence of strong currents, as if in a gigantic churn. By some strange chance, when James Weddell in a small whaler
• South : the Story of Shaekleton's La-at Expedition. 1914-1917. By Sir Ernest Shackleton. London: Reinemana.. 121s. 'Leta_
first sailed into these waters in 1823, he found the sea almost clear of ice, and be.aailed on and on till, after passing 74° South latitude, he thought it best to turn back as his stores were running short. Later explorers have invariably found the Weddell Sea full of ice in an excessively active condition. Sir Ernest Shaekletcn, by careful navigation, sailed two degrees further south than Weddell, and almost touched the Caird Coast where it was hoped to land. But while he was in sight of the coast his ship was beset on January 18th, 1915. The ` Endurance' drifted northward in the pack for nine months, and then was crushed like an eggshell by the stupendous pressure of the ice. For over five months the shipwrecked men, with their boats and supplies, drifted north on a floe, which gradually diminished in size, and at last broke up. They took to their boats, and, after a most perilous voyage amid the masses of ice, reached Elephant Island on April 14th, 1916. The party were now on dry land, but they had only five weeks' supplies and several of the men were ill. Sir Ernest Shackleton with five members of the crew decided, as a forlorn hope, to attempt to reach the whaling station on South Georgia, eight hundred miles away across & very stormy sea. His account of this desperate venture in a small half-decked boat is one of the most spirited chapters in the history of modern exploration. Good seamanship and sheer determination to succeed brought the little band to South Georgia, after seventeen days of battling with Polar seas and Polar storms. They landed at the wrong end of South Georgia, and the author with two of his men had to cross the unknown mountains and glaciers in the interior of the island before they could reach the whalers' settlement. The author's first task was to arrange for the rescue of the party on Elephant Island. The dangers of South Polar navigation are illustrated by the fact that it was only at the fourth attempt that the author reached the island. A British whaler and an Argentine vessel failed ; a Chilean steamer succeeded on her second trip in evading the ice and embarking the twenty-two castaways, who after four months were in a sad plight.
Sir Ernest Shackleton had then to go to Australia, and thence to the Ross Sea to rescue the auxiliary expedition which had been ready to receive him at the end of his proposed trans- continental march. This party also had a trying experience. Their ship, the ` Aurora,' was forced out of her winter quarters and drifted in the pack-ice for ninny months until she contrived to escape in a battered condition. The men who had to lay a line of depots as far as 83° South latitude suffered much in the course of their three months' march. One of them, Mr. Spencer- Smith, died from exhaustion after being dragged for many days, as a helpless invalid, on a sledge by his comrades. Two others, Captain Mackintosh and Mr. Hayward, who became equally helpless from scurvy, were saved by their companions, Mr. Wild, Mr. Joyce, and Mr. Richards, though on a later journey across the sea-ice they disappeared in a storm. The journal of this long march reminds us that, though several explorers have penetrated far into the interior from the Ross Sea, across the gigantic Barrier to the mountains beyond which lies the South Pole, it is still and will always be a dangerous adventure, even for the strongest men. Sir Ernest Shackleton's book is written in a vigorous style, and is illustrated with many photographs, the best of which exemplify the stupendous power of the Polar currents on the ice. It is wonderful that any ships can penetrate these ice-bound seas and return to tell the tale.
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