My Star
All, that I know
Of a certain star
Is, it can throw
(Like the angled spar)
Now a dart of red,
Now a dart of blue
Till my friends have said
They would fain see, too,
My star that dartles the red and the blue!
Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled:
They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it.
What matter to me if their star is a world?
Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.
by Robert Browning
The James Caird
I will be in charge of the James Caird, with Wild as mate. Worsley will captain the Dudley Docker with Greenstreet his second, and ‘Buddha’ Hudson will head the Stancomb Wills, assisted by Tom Crean.
“I have been busy since Saturday finishing the sledge for the boat & now I am building the boat up 1 foot higher & decking her in half way making her fit to carry the whole party in case we have to make a longer journey than we intisipate at present.
“I have started to raise the Dudley Docker a strake higher at my leisure. It is to pass time for me & it makes the boat carry more & more seaworthy.”
— Harry McNeish
“Really, this sort of life has its attractions. I read somewhere that all a man needs to be happy is a full stomach and warmth, and I begin to think it is nearly true. No worries, no trains, no letters to answer, no collars to wear — but I wonder which of us would not jump at the chance to change it all tomorrow!”
— Alexander Macklin
Shackleton with Hurley skinning a penguin.
A composite picture by Frank Hurley, demonstrating penguins wandering into camp.
The hoop tents had been designed by Marston especially for this expedition. They function in a similar way to a baby’s pram, unfurling up and down, and can be struck in a number of seconds. The center-pole tents, although less quick to collapse, are significantly more wind-resistant, in that they provide a slimmer profile to the elements.
The galley shielding stove and cook has been christened The Billabong by our Australian, while the ex-wheelhouse sheltering the stores, the province of stores master Orde-Lees, has become The Rabbit Hutch.
“On one occasion a wonderful stew made from seal meat, with two or three tins of Irish stew that had been saved from the ship, fell into the fire through the bottom of the oil drum that we used as a saucepan becoming burnt out on account of the sudden intense heat of the fire below. We lunched that day on one biscuit and a quarter of a tin of bully beef each, frozen hard.”
— Frank Worsley
“Shackleton was prepared for the worst eventuality of having to stop on the Pack for another winter… On the other hand if by the end of January we have, as is probably, drifted near enough to Graham’s Land, or the S. Orkneys, we may make one or the other by aid of the leads we hope to have come to… The third alternative is a risky but a necessary dash to the West at the end of Jan, abandoning boats but sledging the small punt the Carpenter has made. This we would only do if the drift became arrested … so … that we were fairly certain we would otherwise have to spend the winter on the floe running the risk of it opening and crushing the boats some dark winters midnight.”
— Frank Worsley
Shackleton. 