VOYAGES BEYOND · 1915 · THE WEDDELL SEA
The Endurance holds
January 1915, the Weddell Sea. Ernest Shackleton's Endurance lies a day's sail from Vahsel Bay, where the first crossing of Antarctica is to begin, when the pack ice closes to crush her. This is the timeline where a lead opens instead, and the ship goes through.
You are reading the timeline that almost was · notes marked THE RECORD are real history
19 JANUARY 1915
January 1915. Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance is working south through the pack of the Weddell Sea, a day's sail from Vahsel Bay. There he means to land six men, sixty-nine dogs and two motor sledges. From that bay he will walk eighteen hundred miles across Antarctica to the Ross Sea, the first crossing of the continent. On the far coast a second ship, the Aurora, lands men to lay depots of food toward the Pole to meet him. Now the floes crowd in, and her timbers begin to groan.
In the timeline recorded here, a black lead opens in the ice ahead of her bow. The pack lets the ship through.
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