NOVA Online | Shackleton's Voyage of Endurance | Diary of a Survivor (7)

	To see this portion of the diary in the original, click the image above.

Diary of a Survivor
14 April 1916

It was a truly magnificent sunrise, as beautiful a one as we had seen and the brightness and genial glow put new warmth into our half frozen bodies and raised new hopes in our hearts.

The spray during the night had frozen on our outer clothing and our Burberry blouses were as stiff as parchment on us. As they thawed out they became correspondingly wet, but when the sun got higher in the sky its warmth aided by the breeze was sufficient to dry things and we hung out our mits [sic], socks, etc on the stays of the mast and got them fairly dry during the day.

During the whole voyage, even on the coldest nights, we found that in spite of our mits [sic] being so sopping wet that we had to take them off from time to time to wring the water out of them, they kept our hands reasonably warm, or if not exactly warm, they did not get so cold as to be in danger of frost bite, though they felt wet and cold all the time, as was only to be expected. In the case of our socks, however, this did not apply and we had to resort to every possible expedient to keep our feet fairly dry.

As it grew lighter, Elephant Island loomed up through the mist on our port hand and for various reasons, thenceforth became our goal.

< Previous: 13 April | Next: 15 April >

Printer-Friendly Format

Feedback