Ship Adrift for 312 Days

The drift of the Antarctic exploration vessel SY [Steam Yacht] Aurora was an ordeal which lasted 312 days, during the Ross Sea chapter of Sir Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, 1914–17. It began when the ship broke loose from its anchorage in McMurdo Sound in May 1915, during a gale. Caught in heavy pack ice and unable to manoeuvre, Aurora, with eighteen men aboard, was carried into the open waters of the Ross Sea and Southern Ocean, leaving ten men stranded ashore with meagre provisions.

                                                               SY Aurora

Aurora, a 40-year-old former Arctic whaler registered as a steam yacht, had brought the Ross Sea party to Cape Evans in McMurdo Sound in January 1915, to establish its base there in support of Shackleton's proposed transcontinental crossing. When Aurora's captain Aeneas Mackintosh took charge of activities ashore, first officer Joseph Stenhouse assumed command of the ship. Stenhouse's inexperience may have contributed to the choice of an inappropriate winter's berth, although his options were restricted by the instructions of his superiors. After the ship was blown away it suffered severe damage in the ice, including the destruction of its rudder and the loss of its anchors; on several occasions its situation was such that Stenhouse considered abandonment. Efforts to make wireless contact with Cape Evans and, later, with stations in New Zealand and Australia, were unavailing; the drift extended through the southern winter and spring to reach a position north of the Antarctic Circle. In February 1916 the ice finally broke up, and a month later the ship was free. It was subsequently able to reach New Zealand for repairs and resupply, before returning to Antarctica to rescue the surviving members of the shore party.

Despite his role in saving the ship, after Aurora's arrival in Port Chalmers, Stenhouse was removed from command by the organisers of the Ross Sea party relief expedition, so the ship returned to McMurdo Sound under a new commander and with a substantially different crew. Stenhouse was later appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his service aboard Aurora.

Background of the Expedition

The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition comprised two parties. The first, under Sir Ernest Shackleton, sailed to the Weddell Sea in the Endurance, intending to establish a base there from which a group would march across the continent via the South Pole to McMurdo Sound on the Ross Sea side. A second party under Aeneas Mackintosh in Aurora was landed at a Ross Sea base, with the task of laying supply depots along the expected route of the latter stages of Shackleton's march, a mission which Shackleton thought straightforward. Shackleton devoted little time to the details of the Ross Sea operation; thus, on arriving in Australia to take up his appointment, Mackintosh found himself faced with an unseaworthy ship and no funds to rectify the situation. Aurora, though strongly built, was 40 years old and had recently returned from Douglas Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition in need of an extensive refit. After the intervention of the eminent Australian polar scientist Edgeworth David the Australian government provided money and dockyard facilities to make Aurora fit for further Antarctic service.

Of the Ross Sea party that eventually sailed from Australia in December 1914, only Mackintosh, Ernest Joyce who was in charge of the dogs, and the ship's boatswain James "Scotty" Paton had significant experience of Antarctic conditions. Some of the party were last-minute additions: Adrian Donnelly, a railway engineer who had never been to sea, became Aurora's second engineering officer, while Lionel Hooke, the wireless operator, was an 18-year-old apprentice. Aurora's chief officer was Joseph Stenhouse, from the British India Steam Navigation Company. Stenhouse, who was 26 years old when he joined the expedition, was in Australia recovering from a bout of depression when he heard of Shackleton's plans, and had travelled to London to secure the Aurora post. Although as a boy he had been inspired by the polar exploits of Fridtjof Nansen, Scott and William Speirs Bruce, Stenhouse had no direct experience of Antarctic waters or ice conditions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SY_Aurora%27s_drift