Endurance book georgia1/16/2024 The success of this voyage depended on Worsley’s absolute accuracy, based on observations and estimations he made in the worst possible environmental conditions, while sleep-deprived and frostbitten. These men, in this tiny boat, were going from one pinpoint of rock in the Southern Ocean to another, facing high winds, massive currents and choppy waters that could push them wildly astray or even sink them. On April 24, 1916, Worsley got “ The first sunny day with a clear enough horizon to get a sight for rating my chronometer.” That same day, he, Shackleton and four other men set off under sail in the 22.5-foot James Caird, carrying Worsley’s chronometer, navigational books and two sextants, used for fixing the position of the Sun and stars. Every day, Worsley “ watched closely for the sun or stars to appear, to correct my chronometer, on the accuracy of which our lives and the success of the journey would depend.” The men used parts of the other lifeboats to reinforce the James Caird for a long sea journey. Before the Endurance was crushed, he had “ worked out the courses and distances from the South Orkneys to South Georgia, the Falklands and Cape Horn, respectively, and from Elephant Island to the same places,” he recalled in his memoir. Shackleton believed that the only hope of survival lay in fetching help from elsewhere. Once they managed to arrive on a little rocky strip called Elephant Island, off the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, they still faced starvation. To do that, he compared his measurement with the time on his chronometer and written tables of calculations. He got his observation and we waited eagerly while he worked out the sight.” As the journey began, Shackleton “ saw Worsley, as navigating officer, balancing himself on the gunwale of the Dudley Docker with his arm around the mast, ready to snap the sun. Worsley was in charge of getting them to land. The 28 men and their remaining gear and supplies loaded into three lifeboats – the James Caird, Dudley Docker and Stancomb Wills – each named for major donors to the expedition. In April 1916, six months after the Endurance sank, the sea ice on which they had camped began to break up. When the Endurance was crushed, the crew had to get themselves to safety, or die on an ice floe adrift somewhere in the Southern Ocean. Worsley called it “ the seaman’s calculation of courses and distance.” Aiming for land So navigation largely depended on “dead reckoning.” This was the process of calculating a vessel’s position using a previously determined position and incorporating estimates of how fast and which way the ship was moving. On the ocean, with few fixed land points visible, amid foul weather, it was nearly impossible. Making these astronomical observations and doing the resulting calculations was difficult enough on land. The key was making sure the time measurement for that other location was accurate. Longitude required comparing the local noon – the moment when the Sun was at its highest point – with the actual time at another location where the longitude was already known. Latitude is easy to find from the angle of the Sun above the horizon at noon. Navigation requires determining a ship’s location in latitude and longitude. Underwood & Underwood/Corbis via Getty Images Marking time Without him, the story of Shackleton’s survival would likely have been very different.Įrnest Shackleton, left, with members of his crew at their encampment on the frozen ocean after the Endurance sank. ![]() Lesser known is the importance of the navigational skills of the 42-year-old Worsley, a New Zealander who had spent decades in the British Merchant Navy and the Royal Navy Reserve. Shackleton’s own leadership has become the stuff of legend, as has his commitment to ensuring that not a man was lost from the group under his command – though three members of the expedition’s 10-man group in the Ross Sea did perish. The force of the ice slowly crushed the Endurance, sinking it 10 months later, and kicking off what would become an incredible – and almost unbelievable – saga of survival and navigation by Shackleton and his crew. The ship got stuck in sea ice in the Weddell Sea in January 1915, forcing the men off the ship into tents pitched on the frozen ocean nearby. The Endurance had left England in August 1914, with the Irishman Shackleton hoping to become the first to cross the Antarctic continent from one side to the other.īut they never even landed on Antarctica. National Library of Australia via Wikimedia Commons Navigation was key
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