Early this morning we arrived off of Point Wild on the north side of Elephant Island (named for the elephant seals that flourished here until they were exterminated by sealers, their blubber rendered into lamp oil to illuminate the houses of the nineteenth century.) Pt. Wild is named for Frank Wild, second in command of Sir Ernest Shackleton's British Imperial TransAntarctic Expedition. Imagine yourself one of the twenty-eight members of the expedition.
You left England on August 1 and Grytviken, South Georgia Island on December 5, 1914. Your ship, the Endurance, was caught in the ice of the Weddell Sea in January of 1915. In October you abandoned the damaged ship and soon thereafter you watched her sink. You drifted on the ice until the end of March 1916, and then you took to three small boats. Sixteen days later, 497 days after leaving South Georgia Island, your feet once again touch land. It is Elephant Island, an isolated bit of rock in the Southern Ocean. Twenty-two members of the failed expedition waited at Pt. Wild for four months, through an Antarctic winter, huddled under two overturned boats, while Shackleton and five others made the remarkable small boat journey to South Georgia Island. Eventually all were rescued. It is an epic story of perseverance and the human spirit. We had it easier. After Zodiac cruises around Pt. Wild we retreated to the warm comfort of the Caledonian Star and headed off toward South Georgia Island to continue our journey in the wake of Shackleton.
