April 21, 2025 • 49 mins
We're back on the high seas this week, although this time it's a lot colder than most stories we've told. We return to the Antarctic with Aaron running John and Sean through the tale of Ernest Shackleton and the Endurance, a story of survival with few rivals. Listen along as we learn the history of this voyage, and the hardships the men on it had to endure. Find the video version on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@CheekyTalesPod
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
It's the 21st of November, 1915,and a group of 28
men are huddled togetherto quietly watch their ship.
It had been their homefor over a year now,
but its time has come.
They are in the Antarctic,standing on pack ice
that has held themcaptive for months.
And as they watch their ship,the Endurance, they know
it's going to bethe last time they look upon it.
(00:22):
As the ice shifts,the endurance shudders before
slowly sinking belowand into the watery depths.
Moments later,
the ice would shift again,closing up the gap once
held by the Endurance,
leaving no tracebehind of their former home.
Now trapped on the ice,
the men must face the impossibletask,
survival.
This week on Cheeky Tales, it'sthe story of Ernest Shackleton
(00:43):
and the doomedvoyage of the Endurance.
Happy Easter everyone.
John's got the eggs. I'mbeing an egg.
You are being an egg.
Laying an egg.Take that. Hat off.
(01:05):
Hey, egg!
Low blow.
Unnecessary.
Very funny.
Very funny, but unnecessary.
It is Easter Saturdaywhen we were recording this.
And we've all got the EasterSeals.
So far.
Sean is now onto his.
I want to say second egg.
(01:25):
Bird. Bird. You go.We only open.
Them, like, five minutes ago.
I know, like an egg. I do.
Boop boop. The.
All right. Yeah.So the endurance.
Not not an Easter time story.
Oh, my God, cut that out.
I feel like you've donethis story.
We've talked about Shackletonbefore.
(01:46):
We've talked about Shackleton.
We've talkedabout the South Pole.
And that does get referenced.
Would you like me to begin?
I feel like you've donean episode
where they get the ship sinksand they get stranded.
Oh, that was,
You're thinking of the whalingon the whaling ship?
The Moby Dick. Story?
(02:06):
Yeah, but I thought.
I thought it was in the officeas well.
No, that's.
You're thinking of a few storiesthat we've done.
That. You've.
Done,
and also you've probably heardsome of this story before,
and there are some islandsthat are in this that sound
kind of like whaling islands,but they're not.
Okay. Please continue this storyyou've already told before.
Let's kick off.
(02:27):
I mean set sail.
If you're a long timelistener of this show.
Raise the anchor.
Real good one.
You would knowthis is not the first time
we've heard the name ErnestShackleton.
Thank you boys fortaking that up in episode 18.
Welcome.The race to the South Pole. I,
I knowevery time I look back through.
(02:48):
71 episodes ago.
Every time I look back,I'm like.
That was that long ago?
Yeah.
Titanic was like my thirdepisode.
Yeah.
That's 60 oddsessions of me sitting here
listening to you knuckleheads.
Well, now,you weren't in earlier ones.
That's why I said 60 odd.
You could write an episodeonce in a while to to him.
He's done a year.
I always haveat least one a year.
(03:10):
So that episode was originallyuploaded in February of 2022.
On this for a April 2025.
So we learned that,
Shackleton was an Antarcticexplorer
who once held the recordfor the furthest.
What for the first,
furthest south latitudereached by an expedition.
I was just going to say,if you're a new listener.
Welcome.You've got a lot to go back to.
(03:32):
Yeah.
You got 98 episodes of back backfiller.
Speaking of New listener,I had a request
at a get together
the other week
that we twitch streamsome of our episodes
occasionallyso people can live comment.
Oh, God. That's not a bad idea.
Yeah, it's not bad.
Yeah, yeah.
We gotta work outhow to do that.
Yeah, like torturing the liverecording you.
That'sactually dangerous, though,
(03:53):
because that includes all of us
doing inappropriate bitsthat we cut out.
All of the horrific,horrific content that you don't.
See, all the accentsthat we cut. Yeah.
We could possibly do thatfor episode 100. Yep.
All the culturallyinappropriate stuff
that we say in an episode.
How are we going to videoswitch?
We'd have to just do the watch.
Just do the watching. Bethe one.
(04:13):
That have the, chat on the.Table.
Just multi-camera. Yeah.
I just didn't consciously itjust to watch it.
Yeah, that's how we do it.
That'swhat the livestream would be.
That's the one, anyway. Yeah.
Get ready for that to be a wrap.We're not going to do that.
Maybe we.
Will. Who knows? Who knows?
Who knows?
I mean, people can call in.
(04:33):
Bitchy chases. Don't worry.
Oh, sure.It was cheesy. Definitely cool.
Hang on, hang on. Are we doingshirtless? Cheesy? Hang on.
No, I think he's at the Eastershow.
Maybe shirtless.
I'm pretty surehe'll have a shirt on.
He sent me a video of a goosebefore I shoot.
Let's save that for episode 100.
If you've notalready called him.
If he's wearing a shirt.
(04:54):
Can we make himtake your shirt off?
You're.
Tall.
He's got a shirton, but hang up.
Hang on, hang up, hang up.
Yeah. Did.
Okay. After that interlude.
Before his time as an explorer,
Shackleton was oncejust a wee baby.
Born in Ireland in 1874.
(05:15):
Aren't we all?
We all begin as a wee baby.
He would move to Londonwhen he was ten,
eventually finding his wayinto the Merchant Navy in 1890.
Spending ten years
working on variousmerchant ships
until he would find himselfintrigued
by an upcoming expedition to theAntarctic.
Did you miss a G.
What?
Yes. The Antarctic.
(05:36):
Did he sayintrigued or intrigued?
All I can think aboutis Antarctica.
It said what he said, intrigued.
I thought I might.
Have, but, like.
Okay. Squirrel,my squirrel brain is gone.
I'm all like, yes. And tock,tick.
Tock, tick tock, tick tock.
Is that where the,wind bender comes from?
It is where the windbender comes from.
(05:57):
This would be the discoveryexpedition,
Where he would workalongside Robert Falcon Scott.
Nine one half of the eventualrace to the South Pole
that we covered.
Bobby Falcon. Right, right.
Gaining his knowledgeof the Antarctic
and starting his journey towardsrunning his own expeditions.
While Shackleton would be partof the successful attempt
(06:17):
to set the then recordsouth latitude reached.
He would also be so sickafter returning to the ship
that he had to be sent homefrom the expedition. Scurvy?
I think it was just like
from not eating properlyand, like, constantly
marching and stuff.
That sounds like scurvy. Maybe.
So you may remember,if you have.
Listen to thatepisode Robert Falcon Scott did.
(06:39):
Not long later,
he died on the raceto the South Pole.
He did. Still a great man.
On his return to England.
Shackletonwould spend a few years
failing to investwell in few companies,
getting married and generallyliving the life of a guy
that should probably stick towhat he was best at exploring.
(07:00):
He would eventually get the ideato run his own expedition
and put in place plans to do so.
He would round up some money
and got himself the leadon the Nimrod expedition
on a great name.
This expedition would have thegoal of reaching the South Pole,
and while it didn'tquite reach this goal,
the firstascent of Mount Erebus,
the reaching of the furthersouth ever on the 180 K's
(07:21):
from the South Pole,
and the daring returnin a race against starvation,
would make Ernest Shackletona famous man.
On his return.
Shackleton would take partin a number of speaking tours,
earning moneythat he would eventually lose
in other business ventures.
This guy, he kept earning moneyfrom doing expeditions
and then being like,I'm going to invest in this,
(07:42):
and that thing would immediatelytank.
Yeah, invest in the beta tapes.
Yeah. Betamax.
That's it. Yeah.
Zune.
Yeah I think that's going to.
Yeah. HD DVD.
Anyway we've just talkedabout a bunch of dead stuff.
While he would expresspublicly that he didn't
(08:02):
want to return south,he would privately express
his desire to do just that.
How did youknow, then, if it was private?
Because he sent lettersto people.
Okay. Yeah.
After the disaster of the TerraNova expedition
and the loss of RobertFalcon Scott.
So that was the one we covered.
In episode 18
and the success of Roll Upa mountain.
(08:23):
His mind would settle onan attempt
to cross the entire Antarctic
continent through the SouthPole, crossing from sea to sea,
seeing thatthis was the last great object
of Antarctic exploration.He would gather
the money requiredto mount the expedition.
He would also place an adin the newspaper looking for men
with the enticing text.
Oh, saucy.
(08:45):
Well, no, menwanted for hazardous journey.
Small wages, bitter cold.
Long months of completedarkness.
Constant danger.
Safe return. Doubtful.
I mean, that would get me.Wouldn't that get you?
That sounds so enticing.
Honor and recognitionin case of success.
And Shackleton casein case of success.
It is disputedwhether that was real or not.
(09:07):
But, I mean, it's really fun.
What? Yeah. What?An ad in the paper.
What did they, classify it?
Classified?
Yeah, yeah.
What classified?
Missed connections? Yeah.
Yeah.
I saw you on the shore. Got me.
Maybe join me for South Pole.
I saw you with frostbite on the.
(09:29):
You've got some toes to lose.
So not exactlythe most enticing offer.
But thanks to his fameand probably the lack
of the inventionof the TV and internet,
he had no problemfilling his crew.
What else are you going todo, exactly?
What are you going to do?Stay there and be in the war?
Shackleton was known to havea pretty eccentric interview
method, with some people hiredbased on their ability to sing,
(09:52):
others basedsolely on how they looked.
Shackleton was a believerin the idea
that the crew needed to be ableto have fun and be friendly.
So, just so capable.For the. Journey.
So it was a classified.You look good and you can sing.
You're in thepipes, you see pole. Yeah.
I hope you beat thatbecause otherwise that's great.
(10:12):
I didn't mean that. Yeah.
And see my pole.
Come see the. Pole. Are you.
Next up?
Would be the boat to get them.
Their ship? Sure.
Endurance comes into. View.
I felt like running them.
What ship? Sure.
Come on, man.
We should play ship to shore.
(10:32):
Things ship to shore.Very fun game.
Secondly, you know it's a shipbecause a ship can.
A ship has little boats.Yes. That's correct.
We carry a boat.A boat can't carry another boat.
What episode we cover?
That it was itthe Moby Dick one?
We've probably one of it.
No, no, no,it was the pet Noah. That's.
That's the one.
Endurance.
It was not so many shit.
(10:53):
So many. We've donea lot of ship episodes.
Here at Cheeky Towels.
We give a ship nautical tales.
Ship?
Yeah.
Endurance taking notes,cheeky notes.
Floaty tiles. No.
Endurance was not the first nameof this great ship H2O.
Just add cheeky.
(11:16):
I don't we.
Know that's the winner.
But dolphins that watchthat show, it's there.
It's so that. It's.
All clear.
It's so that's what that's from.
Yeah. From.
000 right. Okay.
I'm glad that you know that nowonly.
For the condensation. It's bad.
It's so bad.But my girls love it.
It's good.
(11:37):
So the endurance was firstknown as Polaris and was built
for another explorerwho turned out to be too poor
as it was,especially as a specialty vessel
built for Antarctic explorationand little else,
it was hard to find a buyer
with its ability to break ice,but lack of a cargo hold.
It wasn't suitablefor whaling or sealing.
(11:58):
And so when Shackletoncame kicking tires, he was told
the ship, he was sold the shipat less than cost price bargain.
Yeah, I know, right.
I can't believeyou're not talking about
the extremely specifictype of ship that it is.
And you just glancing over that.
What do you mean?
The fact that it's a woodenship?
No, the fact that it's a barcontain.
Okay.
(12:18):
You want to go ahead. A barcontain.
Alternatively,a bar contain spelt with a
k because it's spelled with aU or a schooner.
Bock is a sailing vesselwith three or more masts
with a square rigged foremast
and a fore and aft rig, main,mizzen, and any other mast.
While a fully rigged ship issquare rigged on all three mast.
The back is square riggedexcept for the missing mast.
(12:39):
The bar contain extendsthe principle
of making only the full
mast square rig,so that's the front one.
The advantagesof a smaller crew.
Good performancebefore the wind, and the ability
to sailrelatively close to the wind
while carrying plenty of cargo,
made it a popular rigat the end of the 19th century.
So basically, for allyou simple listeners out there,
if we just
think of a big pirate shipwith like the three
(13:00):
big square masts and think of asmall sailing ship with like a,
like a little one
that angles with the wind a litt
angledcool sail boat ones at the back.
I understood that last 10sI love.
I love how you complain abouthow many nautical
themed episodes we do,and then the second
you get a chance to explainthe ship, you're like, yeah.
(13:22):
It's calledstaring into the skid.
Going with the wind.
Going with the wind.
To see if these things makesa lot of sense now. Yeah, but.
Why I like it so much. Yeah,yeah.
I do love it.
Is it time for takeyou places of safety?
It might be.
Hell, yeah.
Cheeky sails, cheeky sail.
Save shakes
(13:42):
thou. I don't want that safe.
Okay.
That also was a Rick and Mortyepisode one up seas.
I think I seeyour cheeks. The fact that.
So it would,
the Polariswould be rechristened
as endurance
before it finally launched andwas ready to take to the seas.
It would beone of the last wooden ships
of its time, supportingthree masts and three boats.
(14:03):
Well journeys to and from land.
Those three boatswill be important.
I think. I like Polarisbetter as a name.
It is a good name.
Yeah, the boats are important.
What does that mean?
Polaris. Jason?
Well, these 15 tabs on.
I believe there is a star systemcalled blast.
Yeah, probably an a metal bandand a type of car.
(14:24):
And a buggy.
Yes. Cops use them.
What is a Polaris?
It's a star locatedin the constellation Ursa minor,
or the little Bear.
It's positionednear the north celestial pole,
the point in the sky
where the Earth's rotationalaxis appears to point.
Yeah, right.
This makes ita crucial reference
point for navigationas it appears to stay
(14:44):
relatively fixedin the night sky
while other starsrotate around it.
Okay, so he's the ocean dude.
I'm the space dude.
Well, you're the space dude. I'mthe space dude.
You're started on the far out.
Yeah, yeah. It's not quite.
It's not quite. By.
The middle.
It's pretty close.
When you look at, like a littlerotational map, it's like.
Yeah,
yeah, that would make more sense
(15:05):
because this is wherethey're going, the going to that
pretty much directly underneathprogress.
No, they're going the other way.It's the North. Star.
Is it the North Star? Yes.
He did say that very clearly.
Northern circumpolarconstellation.
Endurance would leave Plymouthon 8th of August 1914.
Right car
and would leave its not reallyand would leave its last port of
(15:27):
call a whaling stationon the island of South Georgia
on 5th of December, 1914,sailing away towards
what would becomea historic voyage.
The voyage begins.
Things got weirdvery quickly, with a stowaway
found on the thirdday of the voyage.
It snuck on boardwith the help of two other crew
(15:48):
one his friend and anotherwho believed the ship
didn't have enoughmen on board for the voyage.
After being
found, the stowaway,Pierce Black Barrow
would get an absolute mouthfulfrom Shackleton, complete
with the question
do you know thaton these expeditions
we often get very hungry,and if there is a stowaway
available,he is the first to be eaten,
(16:10):
to which Black Bar replied,
they'd get a lot more meat offyou, sir. Oh.
Are you?
Shackletonseem to like that, hiding a grin
and sayinghe should meet the cook first.
Black bar would turn outto be pretty useful.
Steward, and eventually becamean accepted member of the crew.
Almost immediately, enduranceand her crew would be met
(16:31):
with pack ice,and progress was painfully slow,
averaging less than 60kmper day.
By the 15th of January,the ship would be just 370km
from its intended landing spoton the Antarctic mainland,
and by the 18th,they were just a single day
sailing from that destination.
Unfortunately,though, the pack ice had set in
(16:52):
so well that the shipwas stopped and trapped.
And worse still,
the ice wasn't thick enoughto allow them to walk to shore,
so it was thick enough to blockthe. Ship, but not thinking.
Not thick enough to walk.
No matter.
Send off might startyou off on this path.
Yeah, you find the hulls.
No matter how hardthe crew tried,
they couldn't
break free from the ice,and it became clear
(17:12):
that they would be forcedto stay in the ice for months,
possiblyeven through the whole winter.
That that would suck.
It's not thick enough to walkon, but it's not thick enough.
It's too thick to break. That's.
Yeah.
Oh, Bucky's that,but surely there's not that much
difference.
But that's a small mark. Yeah.
It did have to be likea couple of inches of ice.
(17:32):
Yeah. The difference.
Yeah I think the other thingwith like pack ice is not
like sorry.
No, it's just a.
Whole bunch of icebergsthat are just together. Yeah.
So that's probablypart of the problem as well.
In late February,there was a glimmer of hope
with, the 14th of February,Loveday starting,
with the crew noticing an open
(17:53):
channel of waterjust 400m ahead of the ship,
with the endurance sitting inyoung ice just two foot thick,
the crew would attemptto cut the channel
long enoughto give the ship a run.
Run up to break the ice
after hours of work.
They had a channel that was 140mlong,
and attempts were made to ramthe ice
with the ship under steam power.
So this thing had, like a steamboiler as well as the masts.
(18:17):
In a bitter blow for the crew,the channel they had cut
was too shortto get enough speed,
and with just 370m of ice leftto get through to open water,
the ice had shifted sothat 400m had kind of changed.
They were forced to give upon the attempt and submit
to the Antarctic winter.
On the 17th of February,
the sun dipped belowthe horizon,
and it wouldn't be seen againfor the next six months.
(18:41):
So if you don't know Antarctica,get six months of darkness,
six months of sun. Some days.
Yeah.
Pack ice is also calleddrift ice. It's
large pieces of ice that are notattached to the shore.
You know, living together.
You think. Adrift. Fast ice.
Even though fast icesounds like it's ice that moves
(19:02):
fast, is actually shortfor fastened ice.
So it's fastened to the shoreversus drift ice,
sometimes known as pack ice,is large pieces of ice.
That is notto be confused with floe ice,
whichis something else entirely.
A mistake I make all the time.
Yeah, pack ice is just largechunks that drift across the sea
(19:23):
that aren'tfastened to the shore.
Right further
offshore, in very wide areas,it comes with ice
that is free to movewith currents and winds.
And to whatever.
Ice man. Eisenberg.
Wasn't that myth.
That's not ice
is ice.
Ice is crystal methodBecause it looks like.
Right.
I know that I thought I wouldtry different things. No.
(19:43):
Well drug talk because you knowwhat's Breaking bad.
Probably not.
No it's not that easy towatch. It on some Breaking Bad.
You're not going to like it.
I probably I mightI like why you.
Won't like it.
Why do you say that?
Because the first season is soslow you will get irritated.
I did try start,try, start watching.
(20:04):
Tried to stop watching it. Yeah.How far did you get?
Probably 2 or 3 episodes.
You won't even remotely feel
like you're investeduntil the second season.
There's too many bitsthat just. It's too slow.
I hate shows that are like that.
Like, I could get throughthe second season.
And JessePinkman, but it is. Worth it.
I don't think he'll get
through March.
The crew would be forcedto endure
(20:25):
continual darknessand increasing boredom
as March moved through
to April and May,the pack has kept moving them
further north, awayfrom their destination.
I don't yeah, if you ping mewith one of them in the eye.
Oh, and the tooth.
He's talking about, Easter eggs.
John was trying to convinceSean.
To try to eat me.
Six egg.
(20:48):
So they're moving further northwith the ice.
And as the months draggedon, they would do anything
they could to keep up
morale, including dice games,storytelling and lectures.
They would hold partiesand generally
try to do as much as they couldto stay happy.
They somehow kept their sanityand the camaraderie.
And as September rolled aroundand the sun returned,
(21:08):
it looked like they might havefinally have a chance to escape.
So just keep in mindthis is like six months.
Six months of darkness.
Like they wouldn't really haveany time keeping with back. No.
So they just watches and stuff.
They just go to sleepwhen they're. Yeah, tired.
Like that is sixmonths of just darkness
and not even having anythingto do on the boat.
Like it's nothing to do.
(21:29):
You can't hunt anything.You can't, like, scrub.
That poop deck would be soclean.
As you might have expected.
The ice started to meltas summer rolled around.
Surprisingly.
But this was actually.
Disastrous for endurance.
As the ice broke apart,
it meant that huge icebergs
would start to move aroundthe ship.
Big Jacky boys.
Yes, big Jaggies pushing it indifferent directions
(21:51):
and from different angles,eventually
starting to crush the shipwhere it was trapped.
There was not good. No,
the sinking.
While the crew in the sinking.
While the crew thought
that the endurancewould be strong enough.
As we know fromthe introduction, it was not.
Yeah, okay, so now this is wherethe name becomes an issue.
(22:12):
Yeah, yeah.
To the. Left of this.Polaris. Yeah.
But it left it as Polaris.
Are you don't call somethingthe unsinkable chip.
Unsinkable two. Am.
I now must be niceworking alongside
the river with a view of it.
Let medo the trick himself first.
There's.
Like, quite often,I'll say, like pleasure craft.
Go pass the number of themthat are called the whatever.
(22:34):
Two, always. Intrigues me.
Like even to number one.
And buy a new one.
Well,what happened to number one?
I think that's what happenedmost of the time.
But it's also nice to thinkthere's so many
leisure captains out therethat are just.
Just ramming into stuff and.
Sinking ship.
Yeah. Boat.
(22:54):
On the 14th of October,
there was a brief window
where it would be an open waterin between the ice
for the first timesince January.
But as the days progressed,the ice set back in,
and on the 18th of October,
endurance would be pushedto a 30 degree list.
And as the days continued,
the ice started toput pressure on it once more.
By the 27th of October,Shackleton had given the order
(23:16):
to abandon ship,
and a day later,
while retrieving supplies,they found that
the ice had penetrated the hulland it was all but lost.
So by this pointit's like crushed
and there's waterin the bottom of it.
It's only beingheld up by the ice,
and they're like tryingto get all their supplies out
the buckets. Yeah.
Over the next month, more damagewas done to endurance,
(23:37):
with its masts eventuallyfailing on 13th of November.
Okay, well,maybe it's starting to
live up to its namea little bit now.
I did lost a month in there.
Yeah, yeah,like in a single book condition.
This was actually capturedon film.
And you can watch it on YouTube.
Find the link in our linktree. Trusting.
Why don't we have it up near.
So many photos as well ofvarious stages of the ship
(23:59):
being trapped in the seaice is really impressive.
One even a night shot.
For all you film nerdsout. There, I want to know.
How they did. That.Just awesome.
Yeah, probably a fire.
Yeah, like the ISOjust kind of feel like a family.
It's. Well, it's.Got spotlights on it.
Yeah, well, we're alreadytaking long exposure photography
because it was wet plate.
It's pretty cool.
Like in the 1950 like 19 tens,
(24:20):
they were able to takeso many shots of this thing
and even film footage of itcollapsing.
A stablewet plate photo at night.
When ice.
On ice on a large formatcamera with a wooden tripod.
That's tough.
If youdon't think that's cool, then
two big red gum.
That's what I say.
By the 21st of November,
(24:41):
the crew could do nothingbut watch as the ship slipped
beneath the iceand into the water,
eventually realizing that theywould need to make for sure.
Earlierthey had attempted to go by foot
with sledges pulled by dogs
and the three remainingsmaller boats dragged by hand.
If a dog's disheartened,
I had dogs the whole timeI had a cat was the cat's name.
(25:01):
It was like Mrs..
It's Mrs.. Chippy.
Yeah, cos it.
Was the carpenter's. Cat. Yeah.
Who was also a male cat.
Yes. Mrs. chippy,this is chippy.
Okay. Not so nice.
Yeah.
I think. Why not, Mr. GP?
I didn't cover it in the story,but I had to shoot Mrs. Chippy.
Yeah.
Oh, andall the dogs, including puppies.
(25:25):
It's really sad.
Yeah. They like. Oh, bad.
Our life is really badright now.
We don't have the foodfor these dogs.
And one guy's like.You don't shoot my dog.
Eventually,he had to shoot the dog.
There's actually a pictureof Mrs.
Chippyon the shoulder of Pearce.
Black burro, the guy that stowedaway on the ship.
Yeah, it's a really nice cat.
(25:46):
It's really sadI had to shoot it.
Now. I'm sad.
Yeah.
So. Yeah, they're trying to.
They're tryingto drag this stuff around.
(26:07):
But they'd only made a singlemile of progress in a day.
Shackleton died.
Shoot, cat.
Shackleton would decide thatthey should make camp on the ice
and hopethat within the three months
that within the threemonths of supplies they had,
they would drift towardsland and find open water.
They couldlaunch the boats from.
It's actuallya sculpture of Mrs.
(26:28):
Chippyon the grave of Harry McNish,
the carpenter of the shipin in New Zealand.
They would set up, a campon the ice and assign
tent partnersbased on crew personalities,
putting the optimistic crewwith the pessimistic crew
to try and keeptheir spirits up.
Yeah,
I can see how that would work,but it could also go
(26:49):
the other way up to the dam.
The men would hunt wildlife onthe ice and generally continue
the good timesthey had stranded.
They had started whiletrapped on the endeavor where.
They hung seals, penguins.
Yeah. It's pretty much it.
And by, But by late
November, it was obviousthey weren't moving on the ice.
They might bestuck here for a long time.
(27:12):
By March of 1916, theyprovisions are running very low,
and the crew would need to starttaking drastic measures.
Where they shot the animals.
Yeah, I think they'd shot themby this point.
That shot Mississippiby this point
because they were confidentthat Mississippi.
Yeah, they were like,they didn't want me.
They were like, Mississippi'snot going to survive this.
(27:32):
Like it's just unkind. So yeah.
We just cutall the really miserable bits of
snow. That's the.
Fun stuff.
It was fun.
Yeah, the fun stuff just stuckon the ice with nothing to do.
They named the cat Mrs.
Chippy
because he followed the coffinaround like an attentive wife.
Okay. That makes. Sense.
Shorthand for Mrs. Carpenter.
(27:53):
Mrs. chippy has his own,
His own Wikipedia page.
And, really.
The desperate marchfor survival,
unfortunately, as always,seems to be the way with,
the storiesof the Antarctic expeditions.
It's the dogswho found themselves shot.
I did go on.
They would be shot in late Marchafter the food provisions
(28:16):
had run too late.This is an optional bit.
I don't yeah, I don't know,go see what he does.
But if we get the thirdcat Kirsty, let's call it chippy
Mrs. Chippy. No, I just chippy.
Is it a boil.
By April the pack ice
the ice packwas starting to break apart
and was still heading outto sea.
Shackleton would make the call
to launch the boatsand try to make the land,
(28:37):
but after a day of sailing,they would need to settle down
on another ice packthat they found.
So I don't know if I mentioned,but they had three
like little boatsthat were on. Yes.
Yeah.
They would rest for the night,
but with one of the menfalling into the water
and needing to be rescued,
it was clear they neededa more stable solution.
But for another two days
they would sail, finding no landor stabilize,
(29:00):
and finding themselves
even further from landthan when they began.
Things were not looking goodfor the crew, which miraculously
hadn't lost a man despiteonly sleeping once in four days,
all their clothingstarting to freeze
solid from the water and snowand frostbite setting in.
So at this point,all of them are still there.
Yeah. Right.
That's impressive. Yeah.
(29:22):
The boats themselves werestarting to be coated with ice.
Nick minute.
Nick Meaney.Well we'll find out.
The boats
themselves were startingto be coated with ice
which needed to be beaten
off them with the oarsas otherwise
the boats would sinkunder the weight.
Considering how far norththey had traveled, Shackleton
would direct the three boatsto sail for Elephant Island,
(29:42):
an uninhabited island hangingoff the top of Antarctica.
By thispoint, they had run out of water
and were no longer ableto eat the food provisions I had
because their maths was so drythey couldn't swallow it.
As they continued to row,
pushingthrough their exhaustion,
one of the three boatswould start to drift away,
with the men tooweak to fight the currents,
(30:03):
and Shackleton wouldwatch helplessly as they did so.
But as night fell,the two remaining boats
would continueto row, fell off an island.
So one boats just.They can't fight the current.
They go on.
I've been in a similarsituation.
It's not fun.
Yeah, so school came for it.
Robin Odom Dame
doing canoeing and kayakingand stuff like that.
(30:23):
We ventured out.
I was in a single kayak
having a great time.
Just it through going throughall the guys in the canoes.
Right. Because I'm in a crack.Super speedy.
On the way backI got put with in a canoe
with a special needs.
So I shouldn't.
And there was a stormbarring you.
(30:43):
So I'm at the back of this canoetrying to dispel this.
We had, like,some of the provisions as well,
just not going anywhereagainst the wind of the storm.
And the person at frontwas not helping.
Yeah.
So, I tried using the kayakthing to try and do it,
but we ended up havingto make a raft or two canoes
and then someone elseon the other side.
(31:04):
Yeah, we got back,but man, it was tough.
Yeah, I you understandhow weak you are as a human.
Go up against Nigel like that.
The storm wasn't even there.
It was just blowingin. And I'm literally just.
Or in a way.
And, like, going, no way.
So miraculously,
in the morning, they were ableto see Elephant Island.
(31:26):
And even more miraculously,
they could see the third boatagain,
which had made its wayback to the island
despite the men's exhaustion.
So they'd managed to. Shock.Loop around and make it back.
Yeah, yeah.
Nice. Good job.
Yeah. So still no deaths.
They would all tumble out ontothe beach they could land on.
And because they're so weak,they shot them.
This is for Missus Chippy.
(31:49):
She runs down a rabbit hole.
So they wouldthey would tumble out onto
the only beach they could land,
and spent the next few daysgetting their bearings
and gatheringwhat resources they could.
Like a sand beachor an ice beach.
Well, I think it was justa rock beach.
Okay. Yeah.
By this
point, it had been 497 dayssince they had touched land.
Sheesh. Yeah.
(32:10):
And the effects on their bodieshad been immense.
Frostbite was taking hold,
and obviously they wereall dehydrated and starving.
One of the men had a heartattack not long after landing,
but survived and made a recoverywhile he was there.
Okay.
Yeah, it's just likethey just can't die.
Like that in the worst.
(32:31):
Conditionsand they just won't die.
What's that episode of the show?
I was like, I can't die.
I feel like.
Oh yeah, is that the acid guy?
Maybe we can.What do you think of that?
Yeah, yeah.And then to me, it was.
Yeah,
it was clear
that with nobody knowingthey were there
and the difficultyof getting there,
there was no hope for rescue.
(32:51):
Shackleton would realize
that he would needto be the one to save them.
And so I gathered upfive of the most able men
and one of the boats and plotteda course for South Georgia.
All theseare the ones that we've had,
where one group goes off,it never works.
They know they all die.They'll die.
Yeah, but,
if you can see the sizeof these boats, they are tiny.
(33:12):
I imaginethey're like man on dinghies.
But that being reinforced.
With the bones of dogs.
Now, the carpenter.
The carpenter made him better,Mr. Chippy.
He straightened them,he made the sides higher,
and he built a little.
A little deck.
Might even be. Poopy.
There is a.
Oh, what is this
(33:33):
I've been treating today.
On his word poop deck.
He's like, hell yeah.
Poop. Hello.
Love the poop. Must.
I don't even know whatthe badge on.
What does the poop doctor?
No, I think it'sthe same as the twin deck.
That doesn't mean anything.
Oh, I. Know, I figuredI'd make it more ambiguous.
A twin deckjust in between child and teens.
(33:55):
The poop deck?
Yeah, the
troll mark, butI thought it was pretty crappy.
Whatever.
A poop deck is a partial deckabove the ship's main
after deck, locatedat the rear of the ship, often
serving as the rooffor the after cabin.
Once againpicturing typical pirate ship.
It's the bitwhere the steering wheel is.
(34:15):
That's the poop decks.The poop deck.
Why is it called the poop deck?
It's from the French word poopy,which means stern,
which is dumb, which is fromthe Latin word poop is.
And what a shame isthe poop deck
is where you go to the toilet.
Oh, it's poop from the Frenchword poop with the knee
on the Lockwood poops.Which means.
Which means backor stern or rear.
(34:37):
Okay. Well, that makes sense.
Yeah. Poop.
Well, next up,we're playing Sea of Thieves.
When I'm up on the.On the wheel, the poopers.
I'm on the pool.
Deck purposeI hope I'm pooping it up. Up.
There is actually a photoof this.
This boat being launchedwith the six guys.
It's, It's tiny.
It's a very good photo. Yeah.
I wouldnot want to be on this thing.
(34:59):
It's actuallya pretty terrifying, but I like.
It's very impressive.
Yeah.
This is the Elephant Island.
Two of the three speciesof penguins that appear on
Elephant Island are chinstrapand macaroni penguins.
Hell, yeah.
Both brilliantnames of penguins.
If you're a macaroni penguinand you listen to Take Tails,
hit us up at Cheeky TailsPod on Instagram.
(35:21):
Your chinstrap penguin to hell.
Sean's got beefwith chinstrap penguins.
Sean only likesmacaroni penguins.
So anyway,
they're pulling a coursefor South Georgia,
which is 1300 kilometers away.
Yep, it's actually much furtherthan the closest, which is 800.
But the waythe winds are blowing,
Shackleton's like,yeah, we're not making it there.
We're gonna make it over there.
I'm going to say irongets into one more paragraph
(35:43):
and then they start doing
okay.
The Southern Ocean isn'texactly the safest ocean.
So as the men lefton the island,
what Shackletonand the other men sail away,
it must have felt as though
they were watching a man sailto not only his own death,
but their deaths.
So he'sthe only one doing anything
to tryand save them at this point.
After watching Shackleton sail.
(36:03):
Away, poop deck.
What is it?
I dropped the egg drop.He dropped a little poop.
My egg.
I dropped. Our egg.I dropped an egg.
Eat it, eat it.
Egg. What number?
Eggs.
I'm so gladthat I got caught on camera.
That was impressive.Oh, I could do.
(36:25):
We're not doing that.
After watching Shackletonsail away, the men left on
the island would settle intowhat could be a very long stay.
They would turn overone of the boats and build
a makeshift shelter under it.
Thoughwith the amount of cracks in it,
they would spendmost of their time
plugging holesto keep out the wind.
I don't have enough fingers.
They would hunt for penguinsand birds,
(36:46):
and would generally tryto make the best of their time.
I couldn'timagine it. Seagull baby.
Gamey. Gamey.Yeah. Full of chips.
To make things
harder, though,
many were startingto be affected
by pretty serious healthconditions.
Yeah, with heart attack.
Yeah. Teeth needed to be pulled.
Harder to recover from,
abscesses forming and infectionsforming in many wounds.
(37:06):
Of the teeth.
The teeth thing got me.
BlackBerry was the worst thougheventually needing
to have his foot amputatedthanks to frostbite,
the surgeons in the crewhad to amputate his foot
in June of 1916, doingso in the upturned boat.
BlackBerry would take his 55minute surgery.
Well, waking up full of jokesand generally recovering
well in the coming daysand weeks. At the work.
(37:28):
They had anesthesia.
They had ether.
And like, yeah, okay. Yeah.
Reminds me of, old mate in the,research station in Antarctica.
Yeah. In that story.
The guy that they thinkmight have been murdered.
No, no, he performed hisown appendectomy. Oh, yeah.
He was the
doctor on the station,and he had appendicitis.
So the article is an appendixout. Woof.
(37:49):
No, thanks a lot a bowler.
Yeah. Tough move.
I learned that storywhen I played the Guardian.
That was one of the storiesin the application.
You may have to performsurgery on yourself now.
It was more like onceyou down there
for the winter,there's no boats.
You have to be there for thewinter. Yeah, and that was what?
The story they said. Likethis guy was down there.
There was no coming to get him.
(38:10):
You have to do it.
As carry sort of.
Yep. Okay.
He's put off and he's wokenup. He's having a good time.
I mean, paragraphsare being story so far.
That's one.
Okay. So now they're goingto start doing.
As winter set in again.
And darkness fell.
The men were starting to lose
hope thatthey would ever be rescued.
On the Shackleton boat.
Things were just as bad.
(38:31):
They were sailing throughhuge waves, having to chip away
at the ice on the boatand dealing
with a complete lack of food.
Nobody was able to sleep well,if at all.
Did anyone lose a foot though?
No, I wouldn't sayit was as bad.
I wasn't able to sleep,
as the sleepingbags were soaked through.
And the constant
churning of the watermade it difficult to settle.
(38:52):
They were still on course,though.
It's hard to believehow with the conditions
eventually, miraculously again
on 6th of May,they would spot land.
They would make it to SouthGeorgia after another night
floating around just off land
as the weather was so badthey couldn't
make it in closeto make landfall.
Can you imagine that?Like you can see it? Yeah.
The weather's just pushingyou out for an entire day.
(39:14):
Eventually the weather abatedand they were able to sail
in, doing the near impossibleand making it to land again.
Unluckily, they wereon the wrong side of the island,
and yet another arduousjourney was needed.
Okay. Yep.
So this is a massive mountainousisland? Yep.
The only option left at thispoint was a three day
(39:36):
trek through iceshrouded mountains chase.
Shackleton would take two men,leaving the other three
with the boat.
They took a stove, a pot, fuel,three days of food, matches,
two compasses,binoculars, 50ft of rope,
one ax and a diary.
What wasn't an ax?
(39:57):
What was it? It was an a.
That's the thingthat's like. It's a garden hoe.
Yeah. There yougo. It's just a big gardener.
Okay.
Thank you.
All right.
That's like digging.
Stuff.
Yes, but originally it was usedto, like,
smooth, huge chunks of wood.
Like alike a like a plane or a chisel.
Is it.
No. It's so it's like a hoe,but it's not like a flat one.
(40:19):
No, no. Like it.You swing it on a handle.
Yeah, a garden hoe.
It sort of eventuallyjust became a garden
as other tools were invented
that they needed itfor other stuff.
They're like, oh, we can use it.
I also oftensee the flat shaving
from a cricket,but it's kind of cool.
All right.
They would not be able to stopand sleep or they would freeze.
What? Nothing.I just like getting you.
(40:39):
Thank you. For me.My interjection.
So I wouldn't be able to stopand sleep or they would freeze.
Objection. Your honor, I knewhe was going to call in an ax.
I was prepped.
And so they would start trekkingthrough the mountains.
That's. He knows me,
stopping onlyshortly to gather their breath.
They would get lostand have to retrace their steps
multiple times.
They would have to cut their waythrough ice and climb over
(41:02):
mountains. Yeah.
On the third night
they would eat the last of theirfood and kept slipping asleep.
After rousing themselves,they would get up
and make their last pushinto Stromness whaling station,
making it thereon the 12th of May 1916.
No one's died yet.
No objection.
My childhood home
(41:24):
was on StromnessStreet and New Zealand.
Yeah. Not the same place, but.
Same exact same word.
The street was name. You spell.
Stromness.
Stromness.Very good. You passed.
That is correct.
I know,because I can also spell it.
They would stagger up to theforeman of the whaling station
(41:44):
and introduce themselves,making him
the first man to learnof the horrific expedition.
They would go aroundand scoop up those other men
that were lefton the other side of the island,
but it would take four attemptsto get a rescue ship
down to Elephant Island.
And after months of trying, onAugust 30th.
So I rememberthey landed in May,
(42:04):
took until August to get a shipto Elephant Island.
The men remaining on ElephantIsland would watch as a boat
was lowered from the rescueship,
and Ernest Shackleton made hisway to land to bring them home.
It had been an unimaginablejourney, and somehow,
despite all the odds,not a single
man would lose his lifeon the expedition.
(42:26):
John just bored.
He's like, no, not enoughpeople have died.
Won't you kill the damn.
Can't kill the cat.
Where's the poison?
I deserve blood from bosses.
I want cannibalism,I want mutineers making their
own community on an island.What a boring. Episode.
Why do you thinkit hasn't happened?
(42:46):
If I got stuck in the ice for a
year and a half and went home,what do you do? There you go.
I've summarized the episode.Yeah, done.
How long did it take to recordthis?
He's just.
Yeah, that's that's the intro.
In the years that followed.
Shouting no. No no no no.
You had your chance,you had your chance.
And you dangled the carrotand adopted.
An. Amazing story of survival.
(43:07):
And you're just like.What would someone have done?
This is some delayedApril Fool's gold.
You got to have some conflictin a good story.
There's no conflict. There's no.Yeah, I hope.
Kim Jong-Il has put
Kim Jong Il's bookon the art of cinematography.
A great story and a great movie.
Need several things.
Number one,
the struggle, which we've got,
they need to comefrom the struggle.
Secondly, lots of songswe've covered that.
(43:30):
Thirdly,someone needs to get married.
I was robbed of that privilege.No one was married.
And then lastly, they got to.
Return to a marriage.We had Mr. and Mrs. Chippy,
sure, we got married.
Not during the story.
Did not during the story.
He did, I mentioned it,that's how he got married.
That's the pre-historyof the story of the endurance.
Anyway, so let's include Mrs.
(43:51):
Chippy as a unofficial and weirdmarriage to the carpenter
Harry McNish.
Anyway, lastly, they got toreturn to the struggle.
But no, no one.
They're all okay.
Yeah.
Kim Jong IL will be horrified.
What does that say?
Something about love.
No votes from.
This is the bookyou bought me, mind you.
Yes, yes.
(44:12):
Communist Shaun.Davis. Right, comrade.
Shaun, comrade Shaun and freemarket capitalist iron.
In the years that followed,Shackleton would continue
chasing fame and riches
through business investmentsand further expeditions.
He would diejust six years later.
He writes on an expeditionto circumnavigate the Antarctic
from a heart attack.Damn straight to life.
(44:34):
He wasburied on South Georgia Island.
It would take 107 yearsfor the endurance to be found.
After many failed attemptsto locate it,
a team would find it atthe bottom of the Weddell Sea.
There is a cracking documentaryabout the attempt to find it
on Disney+, not an adthat is absolutely worth the.
Watch that. Coversthe expedition and discover.
170 years what's that? 2023?
(44:57):
2022?
Okay, no,
you're on year 1916 170.
Yeah.
No, it's sunk in 1915.
Okay.
The rest of the crewwould go on to lead,
either to live out normal lives,continue to explore,
(45:18):
or take part in World War One,
which was being wagedat the time.
So you're sayingwhen we started this podcast,
it hadn't been found.
That's right.
We got found whilewe were doing this podcast.
Not something interesting.
Episode. No,
but between thethe one that we did
on the South Pole beforeand this one, they found it.
(45:39):
That's kind of cool. Yeah.
Still want some death?
The voyage itself would bewell known,
but it wasn't until booksstarted
to be published about Shackletonin the 1950s and 60s
that his and the endurance,his legacy would be grown.
To this day,Shackleton is considered
one of the greatest Britonsever to live, and definitely
as one of the greatest explorersof all time,
(45:59):
and that he.
Didn't explore anything.He got stuck in the horrors
of Antarcticaand then went home.
He did tons before that.Yeah, okay.
He was part of the. Yeah,he was famous.
That's right. Yeah, yeah.
Anyway,
that's the storyof the Endurance and Shackleton.
There's even whiskey.
Yeah. They found somethingwith his name.
So if you want the short versionI went to go to one place.
(46:22):
They got stuck,
I shot some animals, won
some of them leftto come back and rescued him.
They all went home.
Yeah right.
Stories of evil.
Just not enough death for you,I guess.
Next time, we'll do thatplane that crashed in the Andes.
Consideringthe one of the other episodes
you brought me,that was cannibalism. And, like.
All right, we'll do the plane.
Crash in the Andes.
(46:42):
You've brought ustwo cannibalistic stories.
What was the other one?
There was the whalingvessel Riley. Vessel.
And was it the Oregon trial?
Wasn't the cannibalism?
Yeah, the Donner Party. Yeah,but don't you panic.
Well, I'll make it around threeand do the Andes plane
crash next.
Shackleton whiskey is a
purpose built recreationof the type of whiskey that Anna
(47:03):
Shackleton took on his journey.
And where do you get it from?
Lots of different places.
A contribution is madefrom the sale of each bottle
to the Antarctic HeritageTrust of New Zealand.
Let's get some for the podcast.
So the South Georgia
like I think it's Stromnessor the, the other one, great.
Great British.
Or whatever.
Griffin yeah, that one.
It's they don't have anybodythat lives there permanently,
(47:23):
but they do havean Antarctic museum there.
Know.
It's not it's not, Stromnessthat's totally abandoned.
Very cool looking town though.
Very cold looking town.
I actually think it might beStromness that had the Antarctic
Museum on it.
What's the proper.
Yeah. I'm pretty sure it'sgreat. McKinnon. Is it.
(47:44):
McKinnon'sa hamlet in South Georgia
in the South Atlantic, formerlya whaling station.
Longest, largest settlementon the island,
located the head of the KingEdward Combs.
Is that the tanning crane?
That's like other grindingstuff.
It's the one next to Chernobyl.Yeah, yeah.
So is it the island like that?
Like it's just been abandonedand it's like kind of.
Yeah, it'sbecause it was a whaling island.
So yeah, it's not fullyabandoned.
(48:05):
They go because Great Britain
is actually inhabitedby three people in summertime.
So sometimesit's also not easy to get to.
I mean. It'salso where Shackleton is buried.
Yes. And Frank Wilde,I think buried there.
As I say.
Otherwise, we could add it tothe cheeky tales about to list.
Anyway, that is the storyof the endurance.
(48:26):
And until ShackletonJohn was not pleased.
Next time I'll do a muchmore gory episode for you.
Of course I'm not pleased.
I shot the Cat and the dogs.
They're shooting the dogs
and the cops.
Anyway, next weekwill be a special episode
for us next fortnight.
That is the episode. Yeah.
(48:47):
We're not 100% sure we're doing.
What a good idea. 100% sure.
For 99% sure.
It will be a special episode.
It probably won't bea normal story.
So tune in for that.
We'll becelebrating our our success.
But we will see you then.
It has been lovely to see you.Good night.
Good night. Cheeky. Those.
Thanks for 99wonderful episodes.
(49:08):
Thank you for your service,Mrs. Chippy.
I'll repeat.
This is all. Right, Mrs. Chippy.
You've been listeningto Cheeky Tales podcast.
If you'd like to seesupplemental images
related to our episodesor to interact
with us about our episodes,hit us up on at Cheeky.
Tell us Pod on Instagram,Facebook and YouTube.
You can watch our episodeson YouTube
or listen to them on Spotify,Apple Podcasts or whatever.
(49:30):
You get your podcasts.
It's the 21st of November, 1915,and a group of 28
men are huddled togetherto quietly watch their ship.
It had been their homefor over a year now,
but its time has come.
They are in the Antarctic,standing on pack ice
that has held themcaptive for months.
And as they watch their ship,the Endurance, they know
it's going to bethe last time they look upon it.
(00:22):
As the ice shifts,the endurance shudders before
slowly sinking belowand into the watery depths.
Moments later,
the ice would shift again,closing up the gap once
held by the Endurance,
leaving no tracebehind of their former home.
Now trapped on the ice,
the men must face the impossibletask,
survival.
This week on Cheeky Tales, it'sthe story of Ernest Shackleton
(00:43):
and the doomedvoyage of the Endurance.
Happy Easter everyone.
John's got the eggs. I'mbeing an egg.
You are being an egg.
Laying an egg.Take that. Hat off.
(01:05):
Hey, egg!
Low blow.
Unnecessary.
Very funny.
Very funny, but unnecessary.
It is Easter Saturdaywhen we were recording this.
And we've all got the EasterSeals.
So far.
Sean is now onto his.
I want to say second egg.
(01:25):
Bird. Bird. You go.We only open.
Them, like, five minutes ago.
I know, like an egg. I do.
Boop boop. The.
All right. Yeah.So the endurance.
Not not an Easter time story.
Oh, my God, cut that out.
I feel like you've donethis story.
We've talked about Shackletonbefore.
(01:46):
We've talked about Shackleton.
We've talkedabout the South Pole.
And that does get referenced.
Would you like me to begin?
I feel like you've donean episode
where they get the ship sinksand they get stranded.
Oh, that was,
You're thinking of the whalingon the whaling ship?
The Moby Dick. Story?
(02:06):
Yeah, but I thought.
I thought it was in the officeas well.
No, that's.
You're thinking of a few storiesthat we've done.
That. You've.
Done,
and also you've probably heardsome of this story before,
and there are some islandsthat are in this that sound
kind of like whaling islands,but they're not.
Okay. Please continue this storyyou've already told before.
Let's kick off.
(02:27):
I mean set sail.
If you're a long timelistener of this show.
Raise the anchor.
Real good one.
You would knowthis is not the first time
we've heard the name ErnestShackleton.
Thank you boys fortaking that up in episode 18.
Welcome.The race to the South Pole. I,
I knowevery time I look back through.
(02:48):
71 episodes ago.
Every time I look back,I'm like.
That was that long ago?
Yeah.
Titanic was like my thirdepisode.
Yeah.
That's 60 oddsessions of me sitting here
listening to you knuckleheads.
Well, now,you weren't in earlier ones.
That's why I said 60 odd.
You could write an episodeonce in a while to to him.
He's done a year.
I always haveat least one a year.
(03:10):
So that episode was originallyuploaded in February of 2022.
On this for a April 2025.
So we learned that,
Shackleton was an Antarcticexplorer
who once held the recordfor the furthest.
What for the first,
furthest south latitudereached by an expedition.
I was just going to say,if you're a new listener.
Welcome.You've got a lot to go back to.
(03:32):
Yeah.
You got 98 episodes of back backfiller.
Speaking of New listener,I had a request
at a get together
the other week
that we twitch streamsome of our episodes
occasionallyso people can live comment.
Oh, God. That's not a bad idea.
Yeah, it's not bad.
Yeah, yeah.
We gotta work outhow to do that.
Yeah, like torturing the liverecording you.
That'sactually dangerous, though,
(03:53):
because that includes all of us
doing inappropriate bitsthat we cut out.
All of the horrific,horrific content that you don't.
See, all the accentsthat we cut. Yeah.
We could possibly do thatfor episode 100. Yep.
All the culturallyinappropriate stuff
that we say in an episode.
How are we going to videoswitch?
We'd have to just do the watch.
Just do the watching. Bethe one.
(04:13):
That have the, chat on the.Table.
Just multi-camera. Yeah.
I just didn't consciously itjust to watch it.
Yeah, that's how we do it.
That'swhat the livestream would be.
That's the one, anyway. Yeah.
Get ready for that to be a wrap.We're not going to do that.
Maybe we.
Will. Who knows? Who knows?
Who knows?
I mean, people can call in.
(04:33):
Bitchy chases. Don't worry.
Oh, sure.It was cheesy. Definitely cool.
Hang on, hang on. Are we doingshirtless? Cheesy? Hang on.
No, I think he's at the Eastershow.
Maybe shirtless.
I'm pretty surehe'll have a shirt on.
He sent me a video of a goosebefore I shoot.
Let's save that for episode 100.
If you've notalready called him.
If he's wearing a shirt.
(04:54):
Can we make himtake your shirt off?
You're.
Tall.
He's got a shirton, but hang up.
Hang on, hang up, hang up.
Yeah. Did.
Okay. After that interlude.
Before his time as an explorer,
Shackleton was oncejust a wee baby.
Born in Ireland in 1874.
(05:15):
Aren't we all?
We all begin as a wee baby.
He would move to Londonwhen he was ten,
eventually finding his wayinto the Merchant Navy in 1890.
Spending ten years
working on variousmerchant ships
until he would find himselfintrigued
by an upcoming expedition to theAntarctic.
Did you miss a G.
What?
Yes. The Antarctic.
(05:36):
Did he sayintrigued or intrigued?
All I can think aboutis Antarctica.
It said what he said, intrigued.
I thought I might.
Have, but, like.
Okay. Squirrel,my squirrel brain is gone.
I'm all like, yes. And tock,tick.
Tock, tick tock, tick tock.
Is that where the,wind bender comes from?
It is where the windbender comes from.
(05:57):
This would be the discoveryexpedition,
Where he would workalongside Robert Falcon Scott.
Nine one half of the eventualrace to the South Pole
that we covered.
Bobby Falcon. Right, right.
Gaining his knowledgeof the Antarctic
and starting his journey towardsrunning his own expeditions.
While Shackleton would be partof the successful attempt
(06:17):
to set the then recordsouth latitude reached.
He would also be so sickafter returning to the ship
that he had to be sent homefrom the expedition. Scurvy?
I think it was just like
from not eating properlyand, like, constantly
marching and stuff.
That sounds like scurvy. Maybe.
So you may remember,if you have.
Listen to thatepisode Robert Falcon Scott did.
(06:39):
Not long later,
he died on the raceto the South Pole.
He did. Still a great man.
On his return to England.
Shackletonwould spend a few years
failing to investwell in few companies,
getting married and generallyliving the life of a guy
that should probably stick towhat he was best at exploring.
(07:00):
He would eventually get the ideato run his own expedition
and put in place plans to do so.
He would round up some money
and got himself the leadon the Nimrod expedition
on a great name.
This expedition would have thegoal of reaching the South Pole,
and while it didn'tquite reach this goal,
the firstascent of Mount Erebus,
the reaching of the furthersouth ever on the 180 K's
(07:21):
from the South Pole,
and the daring returnin a race against starvation,
would make Ernest Shackletona famous man.
On his return.
Shackleton would take partin a number of speaking tours,
earning moneythat he would eventually lose
in other business ventures.
This guy, he kept earning moneyfrom doing expeditions
and then being like,I'm going to invest in this,
(07:42):
and that thing would immediatelytank.
Yeah, invest in the beta tapes.
Yeah. Betamax.
That's it. Yeah.
Zune.
Yeah I think that's going to.
Yeah. HD DVD.
Anyway we've just talkedabout a bunch of dead stuff.
While he would expresspublicly that he didn't
(08:02):
want to return south,he would privately express
his desire to do just that.
How did youknow, then, if it was private?
Because he sent lettersto people.
Okay. Yeah.
After the disaster of the TerraNova expedition
and the loss of RobertFalcon Scott.
So that was the one we covered.
In episode 18
and the success of Roll Upa mountain.
(08:23):
His mind would settle onan attempt
to cross the entire Antarctic
continent through the SouthPole, crossing from sea to sea,
seeing thatthis was the last great object
of Antarctic exploration.He would gather
the money requiredto mount the expedition.
He would also place an adin the newspaper looking for men
with the enticing text.
Oh, saucy.
(08:45):
Well, no, menwanted for hazardous journey.
Small wages, bitter cold.
Long months of completedarkness.
Constant danger.
Safe return. Doubtful.
I mean, that would get me.Wouldn't that get you?
That sounds so enticing.
Honor and recognitionin case of success.
And Shackleton casein case of success.
It is disputedwhether that was real or not.
(09:07):
But, I mean, it's really fun.
What? Yeah. What?An ad in the paper.
What did they, classify it?
Classified?
Yeah, yeah.
What classified?
Missed connections? Yeah.
Yeah.
I saw you on the shore. Got me.
Maybe join me for South Pole.
I saw you with frostbite on the.
(09:29):
You've got some toes to lose.
So not exactlythe most enticing offer.
But thanks to his fameand probably the lack
of the inventionof the TV and internet,
he had no problemfilling his crew.
What else are you going todo, exactly?
What are you going to do?Stay there and be in the war?
Shackleton was known to havea pretty eccentric interview
method, with some people hiredbased on their ability to sing,
(09:52):
others basedsolely on how they looked.
Shackleton was a believerin the idea
that the crew needed to be ableto have fun and be friendly.
So, just so capable.For the. Journey.
So it was a classified.You look good and you can sing.
You're in thepipes, you see pole. Yeah.
I hope you beat thatbecause otherwise that's great.
(10:12):
I didn't mean that. Yeah.
And see my pole.
Come see the. Pole. Are you.
Next up?
Would be the boat to get them.
Their ship? Sure.
Endurance comes into. View.
I felt like running them.
What ship? Sure.
Come on, man.
We should play ship to shore.
(10:32):
Things ship to shore.Very fun game.
Secondly, you know it's a shipbecause a ship can.
A ship has little boats.Yes. That's correct.
We carry a boat.A boat can't carry another boat.
What episode we cover?
That it was itthe Moby Dick one?
We've probably one of it.
No, no, no,it was the pet Noah. That's.
That's the one.
Endurance.
It was not so many shit.
(10:53):
So many. We've donea lot of ship episodes.
Here at Cheeky Towels.
We give a ship nautical tales.
Ship?
Yeah.
Endurance taking notes,cheeky notes.
Floaty tiles. No.
Endurance was not the first nameof this great ship H2O.
Just add cheeky.
(11:16):
I don't we.
Know that's the winner.
But dolphins that watchthat show, it's there.
It's so that. It's.
All clear.
It's so that's what that's from.
Yeah. From.
000 right. Okay.
I'm glad that you know that nowonly.
For the condensation. It's bad.
It's so bad.But my girls love it.
It's good.
(11:37):
So the endurance was firstknown as Polaris and was built
for another explorerwho turned out to be too poor
as it was,especially as a specialty vessel
built for Antarctic explorationand little else,
it was hard to find a buyer
with its ability to break ice,but lack of a cargo hold.
It wasn't suitablefor whaling or sealing.
(11:58):
And so when Shackletoncame kicking tires, he was told
the ship, he was sold the shipat less than cost price bargain.
Yeah, I know, right.
I can't believeyou're not talking about
the extremely specifictype of ship that it is.
And you just glancing over that.
What do you mean?
The fact that it's a woodenship?
No, the fact that it's a barcontain.
Okay.
(12:18):
You want to go ahead. A barcontain.
Alternatively,a bar contain spelt with a
k because it's spelled with aU or a schooner.
Bock is a sailing vesselwith three or more masts
with a square rigged foremast
and a fore and aft rig, main,mizzen, and any other mast.
While a fully rigged ship issquare rigged on all three mast.
The back is square riggedexcept for the missing mast.
(12:39):
The bar contain extendsthe principle
of making only the full
mast square rig,so that's the front one.
The advantagesof a smaller crew.
Good performancebefore the wind, and the ability
to sailrelatively close to the wind
while carrying plenty of cargo,
made it a popular rigat the end of the 19th century.
So basically, for allyou simple listeners out there,
if we just
think of a big pirate shipwith like the three
(13:00):
big square masts and think of asmall sailing ship with like a,
like a little one
that angles with the wind a litt
angledcool sail boat ones at the back.
I understood that last 10sI love.
I love how you complain abouthow many nautical
themed episodes we do,and then the second
you get a chance to explainthe ship, you're like, yeah.
(13:22):
It's calledstaring into the skid.
Going with the wind.
Going with the wind.
To see if these things makesa lot of sense now. Yeah, but.
Why I like it so much. Yeah,yeah.
I do love it.
Is it time for takeyou places of safety?
It might be.
Hell, yeah.
Cheeky sails, cheeky sail.
Save shakes
(13:42):
thou. I don't want that safe.
Okay.
That also was a Rick and Mortyepisode one up seas.
I think I seeyour cheeks. The fact that.
So it would,
the Polariswould be rechristened
as endurance
before it finally launched andwas ready to take to the seas.
It would beone of the last wooden ships
of its time, supportingthree masts and three boats.
(14:03):
Well journeys to and from land.
Those three boatswill be important.
I think. I like Polarisbetter as a name.
It is a good name.
Yeah, the boats are important.
What does that mean?
Polaris. Jason?
Well, these 15 tabs on.
I believe there is a star systemcalled blast.
Yeah, probably an a metal bandand a type of car.
(14:24):
And a buggy.
Yes. Cops use them.
What is a Polaris?
It's a star locatedin the constellation Ursa minor,
or the little Bear.
It's positionednear the north celestial pole,
the point in the sky
where the Earth's rotationalaxis appears to point.
Yeah, right.
This makes ita crucial reference
point for navigationas it appears to stay
(14:44):
relatively fixedin the night sky
while other starsrotate around it.
Okay, so he's the ocean dude.
I'm the space dude.
Well, you're the space dude. I'mthe space dude.
You're started on the far out.
Yeah, yeah. It's not quite.
It's not quite. By.
The middle.
It's pretty close.
When you look at, like a littlerotational map, it's like.
Yeah,
yeah, that would make more sense
(15:05):
because this is wherethey're going, the going to that
pretty much directly underneathprogress.
No, they're going the other way.It's the North. Star.
Is it the North Star? Yes.
He did say that very clearly.
Northern circumpolarconstellation.
Endurance would leave Plymouthon 8th of August 1914.
Right car
and would leave its not reallyand would leave its last port of
(15:27):
call a whaling stationon the island of South Georgia
on 5th of December, 1914,sailing away towards
what would becomea historic voyage.
The voyage begins.
Things got weirdvery quickly, with a stowaway
found on the thirdday of the voyage.
It snuck on boardwith the help of two other crew
(15:48):
one his friend and anotherwho believed the ship
didn't have enoughmen on board for the voyage.
After being
found, the stowaway,Pierce Black Barrow
would get an absolute mouthfulfrom Shackleton, complete
with the question
do you know thaton these expeditions
we often get very hungry,and if there is a stowaway
available,he is the first to be eaten,
(16:10):
to which Black Bar replied,
they'd get a lot more meat offyou, sir. Oh.
Are you?
Shackletonseem to like that, hiding a grin
and sayinghe should meet the cook first.
Black bar would turn outto be pretty useful.
Steward, and eventually becamean accepted member of the crew.
Almost immediately, enduranceand her crew would be met
(16:31):
with pack ice,and progress was painfully slow,
averaging less than 60kmper day.
By the 15th of January,the ship would be just 370km
from its intended landing spoton the Antarctic mainland,
and by the 18th,they were just a single day
sailing from that destination.
Unfortunately,though, the pack ice had set in
(16:52):
so well that the shipwas stopped and trapped.
And worse still,
the ice wasn't thick enoughto allow them to walk to shore,
so it was thick enough to blockthe. Ship, but not thinking.
Not thick enough to walk.
No matter.
Send off might startyou off on this path.
Yeah, you find the hulls.
No matter how hardthe crew tried,
they couldn't
break free from the ice,and it became clear
(17:12):
that they would be forcedto stay in the ice for months,
possiblyeven through the whole winter.
That that would suck.
It's not thick enough to walkon, but it's not thick enough.
It's too thick to break. That's.
Yeah.
Oh, Bucky's that,but surely there's not that much
difference.
But that's a small mark. Yeah.
It did have to be likea couple of inches of ice.
(17:32):
Yeah. The difference.
Yeah I think the other thingwith like pack ice is not
like sorry.
No, it's just a.
Whole bunch of icebergsthat are just together. Yeah.
So that's probablypart of the problem as well.
In late February,there was a glimmer of hope
with, the 14th of February,Loveday starting,
with the crew noticing an open
(17:53):
channel of waterjust 400m ahead of the ship,
with the endurance sitting inyoung ice just two foot thick,
the crew would attemptto cut the channel
long enoughto give the ship a run.
Run up to break the ice
after hours of work.
They had a channel that was 140mlong,
and attempts were made to ramthe ice
with the ship under steam power.
So this thing had, like a steamboiler as well as the masts.
(18:17):
In a bitter blow for the crew,the channel they had cut
was too shortto get enough speed,
and with just 370m of ice leftto get through to open water,
the ice had shifted sothat 400m had kind of changed.
They were forced to give upon the attempt and submit
to the Antarctic winter.
On the 17th of February,
the sun dipped belowthe horizon,
and it wouldn't be seen againfor the next six months.
(18:41):
So if you don't know Antarctica,get six months of darkness,
six months of sun. Some days.
Yeah.
Pack ice is also calleddrift ice. It's
large pieces of ice that are notattached to the shore.
You know, living together.
You think. Adrift. Fast ice.
Even though fast icesounds like it's ice that moves
(19:02):
fast, is actually shortfor fastened ice.
So it's fastened to the shoreversus drift ice,
sometimes known as pack ice,is large pieces of ice.
That is notto be confused with floe ice,
whichis something else entirely.
A mistake I make all the time.
Yeah, pack ice is just largechunks that drift across the sea
(19:23):
that aren'tfastened to the shore.
Right further
offshore, in very wide areas,it comes with ice
that is free to movewith currents and winds.
And to whatever.
Ice man. Eisenberg.
Wasn't that myth.
That's not ice
is ice.
Ice is crystal methodBecause it looks like.
Right.
I know that I thought I wouldtry different things. No.
(19:43):
Well drug talk because you knowwhat's Breaking bad.
Probably not.
No it's not that easy towatch. It on some Breaking Bad.
You're not going to like it.
I probably I mightI like why you.
Won't like it.
Why do you say that?
Because the first season is soslow you will get irritated.
I did try start,try, start watching.
(20:04):
Tried to stop watching it. Yeah.How far did you get?
Probably 2 or 3 episodes.
You won't even remotely feel
like you're investeduntil the second season.
There's too many bitsthat just. It's too slow.
I hate shows that are like that.
Like, I could get throughthe second season.
And JessePinkman, but it is. Worth it.
I don't think he'll get
through March.
The crew would be forcedto endure
(20:25):
continual darknessand increasing boredom
as March moved through
to April and May,the pack has kept moving them
further north, awayfrom their destination.
I don't yeah, if you ping mewith one of them in the eye.
Oh, and the tooth.
He's talking about, Easter eggs.
John was trying to convinceSean.
To try to eat me.
Six egg.
(20:48):
So they're moving further northwith the ice.
And as the months draggedon, they would do anything
they could to keep up
morale, including dice games,storytelling and lectures.
They would hold partiesand generally
try to do as much as they couldto stay happy.
They somehow kept their sanityand the camaraderie.
And as September rolled aroundand the sun returned,
(21:08):
it looked like they might havefinally have a chance to escape.
So just keep in mindthis is like six months.
Six months of darkness.
Like they wouldn't really haveany time keeping with back. No.
So they just watches and stuff.
They just go to sleepwhen they're. Yeah, tired.
Like that is sixmonths of just darkness
and not even having anythingto do on the boat.
Like it's nothing to do.
(21:29):
You can't hunt anything.You can't, like, scrub.
That poop deck would be soclean.
As you might have expected.
The ice started to meltas summer rolled around.
Surprisingly.
But this was actually.
Disastrous for endurance.
As the ice broke apart,
it meant that huge icebergs
would start to move aroundthe ship.
Big Jacky boys.
Yes, big Jaggies pushing it indifferent directions
(21:51):
and from different angles,eventually
starting to crush the shipwhere it was trapped.
There was not good. No,
the sinking.
While the crew in the sinking.
While the crew thought
that the endurancewould be strong enough.
As we know fromthe introduction, it was not.
Yeah, okay, so now this is wherethe name becomes an issue.
(22:12):
Yeah, yeah.
To the. Left of this.Polaris. Yeah.
But it left it as Polaris.
Are you don't call somethingthe unsinkable chip.
Unsinkable two. Am.
I now must be niceworking alongside
the river with a view of it.
Let medo the trick himself first.
There's.
Like, quite often,I'll say, like pleasure craft.
Go pass the number of themthat are called the whatever.
(22:34):
Two, always. Intrigues me.
Like even to number one.
And buy a new one.
Well,what happened to number one?
I think that's what happenedmost of the time.
But it's also nice to thinkthere's so many
leisure captains out therethat are just.
Just ramming into stuff and.
Sinking ship.
Yeah. Boat.
(22:54):
On the 14th of October,
there was a brief window
where it would be an open waterin between the ice
for the first timesince January.
But as the days progressed,the ice set back in,
and on the 18th of October,
endurance would be pushedto a 30 degree list.
And as the days continued,
the ice started toput pressure on it once more.
By the 27th of October,Shackleton had given the order
(23:16):
to abandon ship,
and a day later,
while retrieving supplies,they found that
the ice had penetrated the hulland it was all but lost.
So by this pointit's like crushed
and there's waterin the bottom of it.
It's only beingheld up by the ice,
and they're like tryingto get all their supplies out
the buckets. Yeah.
Over the next month, more damagewas done to endurance,
(23:37):
with its masts eventuallyfailing on 13th of November.
Okay, well,maybe it's starting to
live up to its namea little bit now.
I did lost a month in there.
Yeah, yeah,like in a single book condition.
This was actually capturedon film.
And you can watch it on YouTube.
Find the link in our linktree. Trusting.
Why don't we have it up near.
So many photos as well ofvarious stages of the ship
(23:59):
being trapped in the seaice is really impressive.
One even a night shot.
For all you film nerdsout. There, I want to know.
How they did. That.Just awesome.
Yeah, probably a fire.
Yeah, like the ISOjust kind of feel like a family.
It's. Well, it's.Got spotlights on it.
Yeah, well, we're alreadytaking long exposure photography
because it was wet plate.
It's pretty cool.
Like in the 1950 like 19 tens,
(24:20):
they were able to takeso many shots of this thing
and even film footage of itcollapsing.
A stablewet plate photo at night.
When ice.
On ice on a large formatcamera with a wooden tripod.
That's tough.
If youdon't think that's cool, then
two big red gum.
That's what I say.
By the 21st of November,
(24:41):
the crew could do nothingbut watch as the ship slipped
beneath the iceand into the water,
eventually realizing that theywould need to make for sure.
Earlierthey had attempted to go by foot
with sledges pulled by dogs
and the three remainingsmaller boats dragged by hand.
If a dog's disheartened,
I had dogs the whole timeI had a cat was the cat's name.
(25:01):
It was like Mrs..
It's Mrs.. Chippy.
Yeah, cos it.
Was the carpenter's. Cat. Yeah.
Who was also a male cat.
Yes. Mrs. chippy,this is chippy.
Okay. Not so nice.
Yeah.
I think. Why not, Mr. GP?
I didn't cover it in the story,but I had to shoot Mrs. Chippy.
Yeah.
Oh, andall the dogs, including puppies.
(25:25):
It's really sad.
Yeah. They like. Oh, bad.
Our life is really badright now.
We don't have the foodfor these dogs.
And one guy's like.You don't shoot my dog.
Eventually,he had to shoot the dog.
There's actually a pictureof Mrs.
Chippyon the shoulder of Pearce.
Black burro, the guy that stowedaway on the ship.
Yeah, it's a really nice cat.
(25:46):
It's really sadI had to shoot it.
Now. I'm sad.
Yeah.
So. Yeah, they're trying to.
They're tryingto drag this stuff around.
(26:07):
But they'd only made a singlemile of progress in a day.
Shackleton died.
Shoot, cat.
Shackleton would decide thatthey should make camp on the ice
and hopethat within the three months
that within the threemonths of supplies they had,
they would drift towardsland and find open water.
They couldlaunch the boats from.
It's actuallya sculpture of Mrs.
(26:28):
Chippyon the grave of Harry McNish,
the carpenter of the shipin in New Zealand.
They would set up, a campon the ice and assign
tent partnersbased on crew personalities,
putting the optimistic crewwith the pessimistic crew
to try and keeptheir spirits up.
Yeah,
I can see how that would work,but it could also go
(26:49):
the other way up to the dam.
The men would hunt wildlife onthe ice and generally continue
the good timesthey had stranded.
They had started whiletrapped on the endeavor where.
They hung seals, penguins.
Yeah. It's pretty much it.
And by, But by late
November, it was obviousthey weren't moving on the ice.
They might bestuck here for a long time.
(27:12):
By March of 1916, theyprovisions are running very low,
and the crew would need to starttaking drastic measures.
Where they shot the animals.
Yeah, I think they'd shot themby this point.
That shot Mississippiby this point
because they were confidentthat Mississippi.
Yeah, they were like,they didn't want me.
They were like, Mississippi'snot going to survive this.
(27:32):
Like it's just unkind. So yeah.
We just cutall the really miserable bits of
snow. That's the.
Fun stuff.
It was fun.
Yeah, the fun stuff just stuckon the ice with nothing to do.
They named the cat Mrs.
Chippy
because he followed the coffinaround like an attentive wife.
Okay. That makes. Sense.
Shorthand for Mrs. Carpenter.
(27:53):
Mrs. chippy has his own,
His own Wikipedia page.
And, really.
The desperate marchfor survival,
unfortunately, as always,seems to be the way with,
the storiesof the Antarctic expeditions.
It's the dogswho found themselves shot.
I did go on.
They would be shot in late Marchafter the food provisions
(28:16):
had run too late.This is an optional bit.
I don't yeah, I don't know,go see what he does.
But if we get the thirdcat Kirsty, let's call it chippy
Mrs. Chippy. No, I just chippy.
Is it a boil.
By April the pack ice
the ice packwas starting to break apart
and was still heading outto sea.
Shackleton would make the call
to launch the boatsand try to make the land,
(28:37):
but after a day of sailing,they would need to settle down
on another ice packthat they found.
So I don't know if I mentioned,but they had three
like little boatsthat were on. Yes.
Yeah.
They would rest for the night,
but with one of the menfalling into the water
and needing to be rescued,
it was clear they neededa more stable solution.
But for another two days
they would sail, finding no landor stabilize,
(29:00):
and finding themselves
even further from landthan when they began.
Things were not looking goodfor the crew, which miraculously
hadn't lost a man despiteonly sleeping once in four days,
all their clothingstarting to freeze
solid from the water and snowand frostbite setting in.
So at this point,all of them are still there.
Yeah. Right.
That's impressive. Yeah.
(29:22):
The boats themselves werestarting to be coated with ice.
Nick minute.
Nick Meaney.Well we'll find out.
The boats
themselves were startingto be coated with ice
which needed to be beaten
off them with the oarsas otherwise
the boats would sinkunder the weight.
Considering how far norththey had traveled, Shackleton
would direct the three boatsto sail for Elephant Island,
(29:42):
an uninhabited island hangingoff the top of Antarctica.
By thispoint, they had run out of water
and were no longer ableto eat the food provisions I had
because their maths was so drythey couldn't swallow it.
As they continued to row,
pushingthrough their exhaustion,
one of the three boatswould start to drift away,
with the men tooweak to fight the currents,
(30:03):
and Shackleton wouldwatch helplessly as they did so.
But as night fell,the two remaining boats
would continueto row, fell off an island.
So one boats just.They can't fight the current.
They go on.
I've been in a similarsituation.
It's not fun.
Yeah, so school came for it.
Robin Odom Dame
doing canoeing and kayakingand stuff like that.
(30:23):
We ventured out.
I was in a single kayak
having a great time.
Just it through going throughall the guys in the canoes.
Right. Because I'm in a crack.Super speedy.
On the way backI got put with in a canoe
with a special needs.
So I shouldn't.
And there was a stormbarring you.
(30:43):
So I'm at the back of this canoetrying to dispel this.
We had, like,some of the provisions as well,
just not going anywhereagainst the wind of the storm.
And the person at frontwas not helping.
Yeah.
So, I tried using the kayakthing to try and do it,
but we ended up havingto make a raft or two canoes
and then someone elseon the other side.
(31:04):
Yeah, we got back,but man, it was tough.
Yeah, I you understandhow weak you are as a human.
Go up against Nigel like that.
The storm wasn't even there.
It was just blowingin. And I'm literally just.
Or in a way.
And, like, going, no way.
So miraculously,
in the morning, they were ableto see Elephant Island.
(31:26):
And even more miraculously,
they could see the third boatagain,
which had made its wayback to the island
despite the men's exhaustion.
So they'd managed to. Shock.Loop around and make it back.
Yeah, yeah.
Nice. Good job.
Yeah. So still no deaths.
They would all tumble out ontothe beach they could land on.
And because they're so weak,they shot them.
This is for Missus Chippy.
(31:49):
She runs down a rabbit hole.
So they wouldthey would tumble out onto
the only beach they could land,
and spent the next few daysgetting their bearings
and gatheringwhat resources they could.
Like a sand beachor an ice beach.
Well, I think it was justa rock beach.
Okay. Yeah.
By this
point, it had been 497 dayssince they had touched land.
Sheesh. Yeah.
(32:10):
And the effects on their bodieshad been immense.
Frostbite was taking hold,
and obviously they wereall dehydrated and starving.
One of the men had a heartattack not long after landing,
but survived and made a recoverywhile he was there.
Okay.
Yeah, it's just likethey just can't die.
Like that in the worst.
(32:31):
Conditionsand they just won't die.
What's that episode of the show?
I was like, I can't die.
I feel like.
Oh yeah, is that the acid guy?
Maybe we can.What do you think of that?
Yeah, yeah.And then to me, it was.
Yeah,
it was clear
that with nobody knowingthey were there
and the difficultyof getting there,
there was no hope for rescue.
(32:51):
Shackleton would realize
that he would needto be the one to save them.
And so I gathered upfive of the most able men
and one of the boats and plotteda course for South Georgia.
All theseare the ones that we've had,
where one group goes off,it never works.
They know they all die.They'll die.
Yeah, but,
if you can see the sizeof these boats, they are tiny.
(33:12):
I imaginethey're like man on dinghies.
But that being reinforced.
With the bones of dogs.
Now, the carpenter.
The carpenter made him better,Mr. Chippy.
He straightened them,he made the sides higher,
and he built a little.
A little deck.
Might even be. Poopy.
There is a.
Oh, what is this
(33:33):
I've been treating today.
On his word poop deck.
He's like, hell yeah.
Poop. Hello.
Love the poop. Must.
I don't even know whatthe badge on.
What does the poop doctor?
No, I think it'sthe same as the twin deck.
That doesn't mean anything.
Oh, I. Know, I figuredI'd make it more ambiguous.
A twin deckjust in between child and teens.
(33:55):
The poop deck?
Yeah, the
troll mark, butI thought it was pretty crappy.
Whatever.
A poop deck is a partial deckabove the ship's main
after deck, locatedat the rear of the ship, often
serving as the rooffor the after cabin.
Once againpicturing typical pirate ship.
It's the bitwhere the steering wheel is.
(34:15):
That's the poop decks.The poop deck.
Why is it called the poop deck?
It's from the French word poopy,which means stern,
which is dumb, which is fromthe Latin word poop is.
And what a shame isthe poop deck
is where you go to the toilet.
Oh, it's poop from the Frenchword poop with the knee
on the Lockwood poops.Which means.
Which means backor stern or rear.
(34:37):
Okay. Well, that makes sense.
Yeah. Poop.
Well, next up,we're playing Sea of Thieves.
When I'm up on the.On the wheel, the poopers.
I'm on the pool.
Deck purposeI hope I'm pooping it up. Up.
There is actually a photoof this.
This boat being launchedwith the six guys.
It's, It's tiny.
It's a very good photo. Yeah.
I wouldnot want to be on this thing.
(34:59):
It's actuallya pretty terrifying, but I like.
It's very impressive.
Yeah.
This is the Elephant Island.
Two of the three speciesof penguins that appear on
Elephant Island are chinstrapand macaroni penguins.
Hell, yeah.
Both brilliantnames of penguins.
If you're a macaroni penguinand you listen to Take Tails,
hit us up at Cheeky TailsPod on Instagram.
(35:21):
Your chinstrap penguin to hell.
Sean's got beefwith chinstrap penguins.
Sean only likesmacaroni penguins.
So anyway,
they're pulling a coursefor South Georgia,
which is 1300 kilometers away.
Yep, it's actually much furtherthan the closest, which is 800.
But the waythe winds are blowing,
Shackleton's like,yeah, we're not making it there.
We're gonna make it over there.
I'm going to say irongets into one more paragraph
(35:43):
and then they start doing
okay.
The Southern Ocean isn'texactly the safest ocean.
So as the men lefton the island,
what Shackletonand the other men sail away,
it must have felt as though
they were watching a man sailto not only his own death,
but their deaths.
So he'sthe only one doing anything
to tryand save them at this point.
After watching Shackleton sail.
(36:03):
Away, poop deck.
What is it?
I dropped the egg drop.He dropped a little poop.
My egg.
I dropped. Our egg.I dropped an egg.
Eat it, eat it.
Egg. What number?
Eggs.
I'm so gladthat I got caught on camera.
That was impressive.Oh, I could do.
(36:25):
We're not doing that.
After watching Shackletonsail away, the men left on
the island would settle intowhat could be a very long stay.
They would turn overone of the boats and build
a makeshift shelter under it.
Thoughwith the amount of cracks in it,
they would spendmost of their time
plugging holesto keep out the wind.
I don't have enough fingers.
They would hunt for penguinsand birds,
(36:46):
and would generally tryto make the best of their time.
I couldn'timagine it. Seagull baby.
Gamey. Gamey.Yeah. Full of chips.
To make things
harder, though,
many were startingto be affected
by pretty serious healthconditions.
Yeah, with heart attack.
Yeah. Teeth needed to be pulled.
Harder to recover from,
abscesses forming and infectionsforming in many wounds.
(37:06):
Of the teeth.
The teeth thing got me.
BlackBerry was the worst thougheventually needing
to have his foot amputatedthanks to frostbite,
the surgeons in the crewhad to amputate his foot
in June of 1916, doingso in the upturned boat.
BlackBerry would take his 55minute surgery.
Well, waking up full of jokesand generally recovering
well in the coming daysand weeks. At the work.
(37:28):
They had anesthesia.
They had ether.
And like, yeah, okay. Yeah.
Reminds me of, old mate in the,research station in Antarctica.
Yeah. In that story.
The guy that they thinkmight have been murdered.
No, no, he performed hisown appendectomy. Oh, yeah.
He was the
doctor on the station,and he had appendicitis.
So the article is an appendixout. Woof.
(37:49):
No, thanks a lot a bowler.
Yeah. Tough move.
I learned that storywhen I played the Guardian.
That was one of the storiesin the application.
You may have to performsurgery on yourself now.
It was more like onceyou down there
for the winter,there's no boats.
You have to be there for thewinter. Yeah, and that was what?
The story they said. Likethis guy was down there.
There was no coming to get him.
(38:10):
You have to do it.
As carry sort of.
Yep. Okay.
He's put off and he's wokenup. He's having a good time.
I mean, paragraphsare being story so far.
That's one.
Okay. So now they're goingto start doing.
As winter set in again.
And darkness fell.
The men were starting to lose
hope thatthey would ever be rescued.
On the Shackleton boat.
Things were just as bad.
(38:31):
They were sailing throughhuge waves, having to chip away
at the ice on the boatand dealing
with a complete lack of food.
Nobody was able to sleep well,if at all.
Did anyone lose a foot though?
No, I wouldn't sayit was as bad.
I wasn't able to sleep,
as the sleepingbags were soaked through.
And the constant
churning of the watermade it difficult to settle.
(38:52):
They were still on course,though.
It's hard to believehow with the conditions
eventually, miraculously again
on 6th of May,they would spot land.
They would make it to SouthGeorgia after another night
floating around just off land
as the weather was so badthey couldn't
make it in closeto make landfall.
Can you imagine that?Like you can see it? Yeah.
The weather's just pushingyou out for an entire day.
(39:14):
Eventually the weather abatedand they were able to sail
in, doing the near impossibleand making it to land again.
Unluckily, they wereon the wrong side of the island,
and yet another arduousjourney was needed.
Okay. Yep.
So this is a massive mountainousisland? Yep.
The only option left at thispoint was a three day
(39:36):
trek through iceshrouded mountains chase.
Shackleton would take two men,leaving the other three
with the boat.
They took a stove, a pot, fuel,three days of food, matches,
two compasses,binoculars, 50ft of rope,
one ax and a diary.
What wasn't an ax?
(39:57):
What was it? It was an a.
That's the thingthat's like. It's a garden hoe.
Yeah. There yougo. It's just a big gardener.
Okay.
Thank you.
All right.
That's like digging.
Stuff.
Yes, but originally it was usedto, like,
smooth, huge chunks of wood.
Like alike a like a plane or a chisel.
Is it.
No. It's so it's like a hoe,but it's not like a flat one.
(40:19):
No, no. Like it.You swing it on a handle.
Yeah, a garden hoe.
It sort of eventuallyjust became a garden
as other tools were invented
that they needed itfor other stuff.
They're like, oh, we can use it.
I also oftensee the flat shaving
from a cricket,but it's kind of cool.
All right.
They would not be able to stopand sleep or they would freeze.
What? Nothing.I just like getting you.
(40:39):
Thank you. For me.My interjection.
So I wouldn't be able to stopand sleep or they would freeze.
Objection. Your honor, I knewhe was going to call in an ax.
I was prepped.
And so they would start trekkingthrough the mountains.
That's. He knows me,
stopping onlyshortly to gather their breath.
They would get lostand have to retrace their steps
multiple times.
They would have to cut their waythrough ice and climb over
(41:02):
mountains. Yeah.
On the third night
they would eat the last of theirfood and kept slipping asleep.
After rousing themselves,they would get up
and make their last pushinto Stromness whaling station,
making it thereon the 12th of May 1916.
No one's died yet.
No objection.
My childhood home
(41:24):
was on StromnessStreet and New Zealand.
Yeah. Not the same place, but.
Same exact same word.
The street was name. You spell.
Stromness.
Stromness.Very good. You passed.
That is correct.
I know,because I can also spell it.
They would stagger up to theforeman of the whaling station
(41:44):
and introduce themselves,making him
the first man to learnof the horrific expedition.
They would go aroundand scoop up those other men
that were lefton the other side of the island,
but it would take four attemptsto get a rescue ship
down to Elephant Island.
And after months of trying, onAugust 30th.
So I rememberthey landed in May,
(42:04):
took until August to get a shipto Elephant Island.
The men remaining on ElephantIsland would watch as a boat
was lowered from the rescueship,
and Ernest Shackleton made hisway to land to bring them home.
It had been an unimaginablejourney, and somehow,
despite all the odds,not a single
man would lose his lifeon the expedition.
(42:26):
John just bored.
He's like, no, not enoughpeople have died.
Won't you kill the damn.
Can't kill the cat.
Where's the poison?
I deserve blood from bosses.
I want cannibalism,I want mutineers making their
own community on an island.What a boring. Episode.
Why do you thinkit hasn't happened?
(42:46):
If I got stuck in the ice for a
year and a half and went home,what do you do? There you go.
I've summarized the episode.Yeah, done.
How long did it take to recordthis?
He's just.
Yeah, that's that's the intro.
In the years that followed.
Shouting no. No no no no.
You had your chance,you had your chance.
And you dangled the carrotand adopted.
An. Amazing story of survival.
(43:07):
And you're just like.What would someone have done?
This is some delayedApril Fool's gold.
You got to have some conflictin a good story.
There's no conflict. There's no.Yeah, I hope.
Kim Jong-Il has put
Kim Jong Il's bookon the art of cinematography.
A great story and a great movie.
Need several things.
Number one,
the struggle, which we've got,
they need to comefrom the struggle.
Secondly, lots of songswe've covered that.
(43:30):
Thirdly,someone needs to get married.
I was robbed of that privilege.No one was married.
And then lastly, they got to.
Return to a marriage.We had Mr. and Mrs. Chippy,
sure, we got married.
Not during the story.
Did not during the story.
He did, I mentioned it,that's how he got married.
That's the pre-historyof the story of the endurance.
Anyway, so let's include Mrs.
(43:51):
Chippy as a unofficial and weirdmarriage to the carpenter
Harry McNish.
Anyway, lastly, they got toreturn to the struggle.
But no, no one.
They're all okay.
Yeah.
Kim Jong IL will be horrified.
What does that say?
Something about love.
No votes from.
This is the bookyou bought me, mind you.
Yes, yes.
(44:12):
Communist Shaun.Davis. Right, comrade.
Shaun, comrade Shaun and freemarket capitalist iron.
In the years that followed,Shackleton would continue
chasing fame and riches
through business investmentsand further expeditions.
He would diejust six years later.
He writes on an expeditionto circumnavigate the Antarctic
from a heart attack.Damn straight to life.
(44:34):
He wasburied on South Georgia Island.
It would take 107 yearsfor the endurance to be found.
After many failed attemptsto locate it,
a team would find it atthe bottom of the Weddell Sea.
There is a cracking documentaryabout the attempt to find it
on Disney+, not an adthat is absolutely worth the.
Watch that. Coversthe expedition and discover.
170 years what's that? 2023?
(44:57):
2022?
Okay, no,
you're on year 1916 170.
Yeah.
No, it's sunk in 1915.
Okay.
The rest of the crewwould go on to lead,
either to live out normal lives,continue to explore,
(45:18):
or take part in World War One,
which was being wagedat the time.
So you're sayingwhen we started this podcast,
it hadn't been found.
That's right.
We got found whilewe were doing this podcast.
Not something interesting.
Episode. No,
but between thethe one that we did
on the South Pole beforeand this one, they found it.
(45:39):
That's kind of cool. Yeah.
Still want some death?
The voyage itself would bewell known,
but it wasn't until booksstarted
to be published about Shackletonin the 1950s and 60s
that his and the endurance,his legacy would be grown.
To this day,Shackleton is considered
one of the greatest Britonsever to live, and definitely
as one of the greatest explorersof all time,
(45:59):
and that he.
Didn't explore anything.He got stuck in the horrors
of Antarcticaand then went home.
He did tons before that.Yeah, okay.
He was part of the. Yeah,he was famous.
That's right. Yeah, yeah.
Anyway,
that's the storyof the Endurance and Shackleton.
There's even whiskey.
Yeah. They found somethingwith his name.
So if you want the short versionI went to go to one place.
(46:22):
They got stuck,
I shot some animals, won
some of them leftto come back and rescued him.
They all went home.
Yeah right.
Stories of evil.
Just not enough death for you,I guess.
Next time, we'll do thatplane that crashed in the Andes.
Consideringthe one of the other episodes
you brought me,that was cannibalism. And, like.
All right, we'll do the plane.
Crash in the Andes.
(46:42):
You've brought ustwo cannibalistic stories.
What was the other one?
There was the whalingvessel Riley. Vessel.
And was it the Oregon trial?
Wasn't the cannibalism?
Yeah, the Donner Party. Yeah,but don't you panic.
Well, I'll make it around threeand do the Andes plane
crash next.
Shackleton whiskey is a
purpose built recreationof the type of whiskey that Anna
(47:03):
Shackleton took on his journey.
And where do you get it from?
Lots of different places.
A contribution is madefrom the sale of each bottle
to the Antarctic HeritageTrust of New Zealand.
Let's get some for the podcast.
So the South Georgia
like I think it's Stromnessor the, the other one, great.
Great British.
Or whatever.
Griffin yeah, that one.
It's they don't have anybodythat lives there permanently,
(47:23):
but they do havean Antarctic museum there.
Know.
It's not it's not, Stromnessthat's totally abandoned.
Very cool looking town though.
Very cold looking town.
I actually think it might beStromness that had the Antarctic
Museum on it.
What's the proper.
Yeah. I'm pretty sure it'sgreat. McKinnon. Is it.
(47:44):
McKinnon'sa hamlet in South Georgia
in the South Atlantic, formerlya whaling station.
Longest, largest settlementon the island,
located the head of the KingEdward Combs.
Is that the tanning crane?
That's like other grindingstuff.
It's the one next to Chernobyl.Yeah, yeah.
So is it the island like that?
Like it's just been abandonedand it's like kind of.
Yeah, it'sbecause it was a whaling island.
So yeah, it's not fullyabandoned.
(48:05):
They go because Great Britain
is actually inhabitedby three people in summertime.
So sometimesit's also not easy to get to.
I mean. It'salso where Shackleton is buried.
Yes. And Frank Wilde,I think buried there.
As I say.
Otherwise, we could add it tothe cheeky tales about to list.
Anyway, that is the storyof the endurance.
(48:26):
And until ShackletonJohn was not pleased.
Next time I'll do a muchmore gory episode for you.
Of course I'm not pleased.
I shot the Cat and the dogs.
They're shooting the dogs
and the cops.
Anyway, next weekwill be a special episode
for us next fortnight.
That is the episode. Yeah.
(48:47):
We're not 100% sure we're doing.
What a good idea. 100% sure.
For 99% sure.
It will be a special episode.
It probably won't bea normal story.
So tune in for that.
We'll becelebrating our our success.
But we will see you then.
It has been lovely to see you.Good night.
Good night. Cheeky. Those.
Thanks for 99wonderful episodes.
(49:08):
Thank you for your service,Mrs. Chippy.
I'll repeat.
This is all. Right, Mrs. Chippy.
You've been listeningto Cheeky Tales podcast.
If you'd like to seesupplemental images
related to our episodesor to interact
with us about our episodes,hit us up on at Cheeky.
Tell us Pod on Instagram,Facebook and YouTube.
You can watch our episodeson YouTube
or listen to them on Spotify,Apple Podcasts or whatever.
(49:30):
You get your podcasts.
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