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Rob Stimpson loves to tell the story of Ernest Shackleton’s trans-Antarctic voyage. “It is one of the most stunning stories of what the human spirit can endure,” he said. In November 2014, he joined a 19-day One Ocean expedition that visited some of the sites from that ill-fated journey, an experience that he’ll share during a presentation at the Dwight Public Library on September 22.
If you don’t know the details of Shackleton’s attempt to be the first to cross the Antarctic, it’s worth learning about. On November 5, 1914, Ernest Shackleton and a crew of 28 men on the ship Endurance arrived at the southern Atlantic island of South Georgia to begin their trans-Antarctic voyage. Conditions would be perilous – the pack ice on the Weddell Sea often froze whaling ships in place. It was to be the Endurance’s fate, too, but what followed was anything but ordinary.
Ten months after becoming trapped in the ice, the relentless pressure crushed the ship’s hull. Shackleton ordered the crew to offload as much equipment as possible. When the Endurance finally broke up and sank three weeks later, it left the men stranded on the ice. Over ice and then across open water in three lifeboats, they made their way to desolate Elephant Island, a journey that took almost five months. From there a small party of five men, including Shackleton, carried on in search of help back on South Georgia, 800 miles away. They were successful and more than 500 days after first leaving South Georgia to begin their expedition, all of the men were rescued without a single loss of human life.
One hundred years later, an expedition carrying descendants of the crew among its passengers, including Shackleton’s granddaughter, revisited some of the sites. Stimpson was on board, too, as the expedition photographer.
Antarctica is one of those places that has to be seen. It truly is one of the last great wildernesses we have on the planet and probably one of its greatest spectacles. It’s nature at its prime.
“It’s incredible to see these places,” he said. “Elephant Island is one of the most inhospitable places on the planet. It is like one giant rock that surges out of the ocean with towering mountains and ice fields and penguins by the thousands. It gets relentlessly pummeled by the ocean from all angles.”
The location where Shackleton’s crew set up camp on Elephant Island and where they were eventually rescued from – Point Wild – “is next to impossible to get to because of the way it faces into the ocean and with the prevailing winds and storms,” said Stimpson.
But before they were rescued, Shackleton’s smaller party of five on the lifeboat the James Caird, first had to make it back to South Georgia. “It was 800 nautical miles in a 23-foot vessel with a sail. They were using a sextant for navigation and it was May – winter in the southern hemisphere – with waves you can only begin to imagine the size of.” They navigated to King Haakon Bay, on the opposite side of the island from where there was a whaling station.
King Haakon Bay, where the James Caird landed with Shackleton and four of his crew after sailing 800 nautical miles from Elephant Island. Photo by Rob Stimpson.
“As we entered the bay on this centenary expedition, the captain had to pick his way in. The wind was blowing at 35 to 40 knots. It was crazy. And all the descendants were on the wing bridge watching. It was one of the most incredible moments of the whole trip. They were all imagining what their grandfathers and great uncles were doing at that point in time, except that they weren’t in a 300-foot ship like we were – they were in a 23-foot lifeboat. And then when those men got to the shore, they were on the wrong side of the island and had to walk 35 kilometres over 9000-foot mountains to get to the Stromness whaling station on the other side.”
Hikers follow the final leg of Shackleton’s trek across South Georgia Island. Shackleton had to scale the mountains in the background. Photo by Rob Stimpson.
Instead of recreating the full hike, the passengers on the One Ocean voyage sailed around to the other side of South Georgia island and completed the last few kilometres of the hike in reverse. The descendents were able to see the whaling station where Shackleton finally found help – but only from afar. “The British Antarctic Heritage Trust is trying to bring Stromness back as a place you can walk around, but right now it’s filled with airborne asbestos so we’re not allowed within 300 metres of it.”
Stromness whaling station, where the Shackleton crew set sail from and where Shackleton found help more than 500 days later. Photo by Rob Stimpson.
It was a spectacular trip, but it’s not the first time Stimpson has travelled to the earth’s southernmost continent. He has been the expedition photographer on One Ocean voyages since 2010 and has made a total of 16 trips to Antarctica. “I’m a polar freak. I’m ‘bi-polar’ I tell people because I love the Arctic as much as the Antarctic. Antarctica is one of those places that has to be seen. It truly is one of the last great wildernesses we have on the planet and probably one of its greatest spectacles. It’s nature at its prime.”
As part of his role, Stimpson pilots one of the ship’s ten Zodiac boats on ice tours or to take passengers to shore. “In Antarctica you are only allowed 100 people on shore for four hours at a time. Our boat carries 90 passengers so they can all go on shore at once, but if you go on a larger ship they have to do split landings.”
There are about 30,000 visits to Antarctica per year on several different ships, said Stimpson. “The captains work together to keep their ships out of view of one another when they’re in a bay or harbour. There’s not a lot of people but there aren’t a lot of places to land either.” The One Ocean passengers hail from around the world but Stimpson is one of the few from North America. He leaves on another expedition in mid-October.
Stimpson’s presentation in Dwight – Chasing Ernie: On the 100th Anniversary of his Trans Antarctic Expedition – is on September 22 at 1:00 pm. He’ll talk about the Shackleton expedition and its photographer, Frank Hurley – one of Stimpson’s heroes – and will share his own photographs from the centenary voyage. Admission is free but please RSVP by calling the Dwight Public Library at 705-635-3319.