Shackleton's Heroes (28 page)

J
OYCE, RICHARDS AND
Hayward had travelled 3 miles the evening before, and were now 6 or 7 miles from the Minna Bluff depot. In the morning they found the weather much the same with a heavy wind, estimated by Joyce to be about 60 miles an hour.
1

Without paraffin for their primus the only way they could melt snow was in a mug over a dish burning methylated spirits. They still had some spirits which were used to start the primus. At an interview, many years after, Richards tells us: ‘You know what methylated spirits is like, when you put a match to it, it goes up like that, well down there in the cold it's rather hard to light. You just sort of get a match on it and coax it to light.' When the water was warm they would put a few tea leaves into it. They could not boil the water using the methylated spirits. In Richards's words: ‘it just wouldn't boil'.
2

They were now at a critical moment in their journey – they just had to find the Minna Bluff depot, but they did not know how because in the blizzard they could not see anything. Richards remembered that the conditions were simply impossible and they had difficulty in even maintaining their footing during the worst of the savage gusts of a hurricane force wind.
3

He also wrote later on the lack of visibility. They could only see a few yards and the sky was no different in appearance to anywhere else. There appeared to be no up or down and with zero visibility they had extreme difficulty in steering. They were attempting to find and follow the course along the line of cairns that had been placed when they went out to Mount Hope but they did not know where their line of cairns lay – they had lost them the day before the blizzard started.

Richards knew the bearings of the line of cairns, they were in his diary, having been taken on the way out to Mount Hope, but they did not know if they were to the right or the left of them. However, they knew that if they stayed parallel to the line of cairns, by steering on the known bearings, they would be close to the right course.
4

Richards and Joyce worked together, as they had before when trying to steer in a blizzard. Joyce was on the end of a long rope and Richards would take a bearing and set him on the right line. Richards wrote in his book
The Ross Sea Shore Party
that bearings were not easy to take because he had to get his hands out of his mitts to hold the aluminium compass. ‘It was a really painful business', in the cold, with bare fingers, and he could only manage to hold the metal of the compass for a few moments before it had to be put away so he could return his hands to his mitts.
5
After giving Joyce the direction with the rope they would judge the wind, which was coming from the south-east over their right shoulder, and try to maintain that same course, based on nothing but the direction of the wind. They would only go on for a short time, about a quarter or half an hour, halt, and Richards would take another reading.
6
Richards tells us there was nothing ahead but ‘a white featureless void', and nothing to guide Joyce to keep a straight course. The best they could do was to see the way the rope lay in reference to the wind and try to maintain that angle.
7

To make matters even worse, they no longer had their sledge-meter, which meant they did not know how far they had travelled each day. They had discarded it days before to lighten their load. This meant they did not know exactly where they were when stopped by the blizzard or how far they had travelled since they had left the others. He wrote later that in their weakened state they finally decided that they would allow about a quarter
of a mile per hour for their progress, and in Richards's words, ‘this turned out to be a surprisingly correct figure'.
8

They were very weak and had difficulty in hauling the sledge in the deep snow, even though they now had very little load on; the tent, sleeping bags and some equipment. Although the three men and four dogs were only pulling a light sledge, Joyce tells us they struggled to even move it at times. (Two months earlier, in January, the same team pulled 1380 lbs, 10 miles a day).
9

Joyce: ‘Up at 4:30; had one cup of tea, half biscuit; under way after 7.'
10

Richards: ‘3pm. Blizzard continued throughout the night. Rose at 4-45 and took 3 hours to get underway on account of the spirit having to serve as fuel.'
11

Joyce:

Richards:

They had camped for lunch after five hours of hauling and it was as meagre as their breakfast. They planned to march on but the wind increased so they could not move. As they lay in their sleeping bags the three men, Joyce, Richards and Hayward, made a number of diary notes. They were now completely out of food, resorting to eating scraps of unused dog food in their dog-tank. Joyce later described it as the worst-tasting meal he had ever eaten, but ‘it had to go down'.
14
The dog-tank was a canvas tank in
which they used to keep the dog pemmican. Richards recalled later they were scraping that ‘for crumbs and stuff like that' and putting it into hot water to get some sort of nutrient. In his mind they were ‘just about starving, there's no question of that and very weak'.
15

An easing in the conditions did come, but they were still unable to  move.

Joyce: ‘Camped in an exhausted condition about 12.10. Lunch. Half cup of weak tea + ¼ biscuit, which took over half an hour to make. With scrapings from dog-tank it is a very scanty meal.'
16

Richards: ‘With difficulty pitched camp owing to the extremely heavy wind and snow. Our tent is torn and threatens to run at any time.'
17

Hayward:

Joyce: ‘Richards and Hayward went out of the tent to prepare for getting under way, but the force of wind and snow drove them back. The force of wind is about 70 to 80. We decided to get the sleeping-bags in, which took some considerable time.'
19

Richards: ‘We all feel cold this afternoon. After lunch cannot risk taking tent down as wind is so strong and drift so thick. We have taken bags inside and are awaiting a lull in conditions, and urgent as the need is we cannot face the weather.'

He added a note to his diary later: ‘The urgency was to march to the Bluff depot and return with food to the three men left behind.'
20

Joyce:

Richards:

Hayward was now becoming fearful:

Many years afterwards Richards could not remember if they even thought of Mackintosh, Spencer-Smith and Wild, or if they would even reach the Bluff depot. He thought that possibly the ‘trials of the moment' were all that they could take in, and they did not look past those. They were weak
and to all intents and purposes out of food and fuel; and the dogs seemed to have lost their spirit.
24

On this evening he wrote in his diary a long summary of the events that had brought them to this predicament. He was unsure of his dates at times:

Richards later added a note:

(In fact, not all their sledging equipment was on the
Aurora
. When the ship was taken away in May 1915 the men at Hut Point still had their gear.)

Richards's field diary continues:

Richards added later: ‘Note – the primus was the vital factor. Without it we would be without liquid and unable to cook.'
28

This was day two for Mackintosh, Spencer-Smith and Wild, waiting for the return of Joyce, Richards and Hayward. The weather was uppermost on their minds.

Spencer-Smith:

Typically, Wild was matter of fact: