No advance was made on and . A moderate gale from the east-northeast closed the ice and set it in motion, and the Aurora, with banked fires, rolled and bumped, heavily. Seventeen bergs were in sight, and one of them was working southwards into the pack and threatening to approach the ship. During the night the engines were turned repeatedly by the action of ice on the propeller blades.
“All theories about the swell being nonexistent in the pack are false,” wrote the anxious master. “Here we are with a suggestion only of open water-sky, and the ship rolling her scuppers under and sitting down bodily on the floes.”
The ice opened when the wind moderated, and on the afternoon of the the Aurora moved northward again.
“Without a rudder (no jury-rudder can yet be used amongst these swirling, rolling floes) the ship requires a lot of attention. Her head must be pointed between floes by means of ice-anchors and warps, or by mooring to a floe and steaming round it. We kept a fairly good course between two bergs to our northward and made about five miles northing till, darkness coming on, the men could no longer venture on the floes with safety to fix the anchors.”
The next three days were full of anxiety. The Aurora was held by the ice, and subjected to severe buffeting, while two bergs approached from the north. On the morning of the the nearest berg was within three cables of the ship. But the pack had opened and by 9:30 a.m. the ship was out of the danger zone and headed north-northeast. The pack continued to open during the afternoon, and the Aurora passed through wide stretches of small loose floes and brash. Progress was good until darkness made a stop necessary. The next morning the pack was denser. Stenhouse shipped a preventer jury-rudder (the weighted spanker gaff), but could not get steerage way. Broad leads were sighted to the northwest in the afternoon, and the ship got within a quarter of a mile of the nearest lead before being held up by heavy pack. She again bumped severely during the night, and the watch stood by with fenders to ease the more dangerous blows.
Early next morning Stenhouse lowered a jury-rudder, with steering pennants to drag through the water, and moved north to northwest through heavy pack. He made sixteen miles that day on an erratic course, and then spent an anxious night with the ship setting back into the pack and being pounded heavily. Attempts to work forward to an open lead on the morning of the were unsuccessful. Early in the afternoon a little progress was made, with all hands standing by to fend off high ice, and at 4:50 p.m. the Aurora cleared the main pack. An hour was spent shipping the jury-rudder under the counter, and then the ship moved slowly northward. There was pack still ahead, and the bergs and growlers were a constant menace in the hours of darkness. Some anxious work remained to be done, since bergs and scattered ice extended in all directions, but at 2 p.m. on March 14 the Aurora cleared the last belt of pack in lat. 62° 27.5′ S., long. 157° 32′ E. “We ‘spliced the main brace,’ ” says Stenhouse, “and blew three blasts of farewell to the pack with the whistle.”
The Aurora was not at the end of her troubles, but the voyage up to New Zealand need not be described in detail. Any attempt to reach McMurdo Sound was now out of the question. Stenhouse had a battered, rudderless ship, with only a few tons of coal left in the bunkers, and he struggled northward in heavy weather against persistent adverse winds and head seas. The jury-rudder needed constant nursing, and the shortage of coal made it impossible to get the best service from the engines. There were times when the ship could make no progress and fell about helplessly in a confused swell or lay hove to amid mountainous seas. She was short-handed, and one or two of the men were creating additional difficulties. But Stenhouse displayed throughout fine seamanship and dogged perseverance. He accomplished successfully one of the most difficult voyages on record, in an ocean area notoriously stormy and treacherous. On he established wireless communication with Bluff Station, New Zealand, and the next day was in touch with Wellington and Hobart. The naval officer in New Zealand waters offered assistance, and eventually it was arranged that the Otago Harbour Board’s tug Plucky should meet the Aurora outside Port Chalmers. There were still bad days to be endured. The jury-rudder partially carried away and had to be unshipped in a heavy sea. Stenhouse carried on, and in the early morning of the Aurora picked up the tug and was taken in tow. She reached Port Chalmers the following morning, and was welcomed with the warm hospitality that New Zealand has always shown towards Antarctic explorers.
XVII
The Last Relief
When I reached New Zealand at the beginning of , I found that the arrangements for the relief were complete. The New Zealand Government had taken the task in hand earlier in the year, before I had got into touch with the outside world. The British and Australian Governments were giving financial assistance. The Aurora had been repaired and refitted at Port Chalmers during the year at considerable cost, and had been provisioned and coaled for the voyage to McMurdo Sound. My old friend Captain John K. Davis, who was a member of my first Antarctic Expedition in –, and who subsequently commanded Dr. Mawson’s ship in the Australian Antarctic Expedition, had been placed in
