SY Aurora broke loose from its anchorage in McMurdo Sound in May 1915. It was carried into the open waters of the Ross Sea and Southern Ocean. Efforts to make wireless contact with Cape Evans and, later, with stations in New Zealand and Australia, were unavailing. In February 1916 the ice broke up and a month later the ship was free.
About SY Aurora’s drift in brief
The drift of the Antarctic exploration vessel SY Aurora was an ordeal which lasted 312 days. It began when the ship broke loose from its anchorage in McMurdo Sound in May 1915, during a gale. Aurora, with eighteen men aboard, was carried into the open waters of the Ross Sea and Southern Ocean, leaving ten men stranded ashore with meagre provisions. Efforts to make wireless contact with Cape Evans and, later, with stations in New Zealand and Australia, were unavailing. In February 1916 the ice broke up, and a month later the ship was free. It was subsequently able to reach New Zealand for repairs and resupply, before returning to Antarctica to rescue the seven surviving members of the shore party. Aurora’s chief officer was Joseph Stenhouse, from the British India Steam Navigation Company. He was later appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for his service aboard Aurora. The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition comprised two parties. The first, under Sir Ernest Shackleton, sailed to the Weddell Sea in Endurance, intending to establish a base there from which a group would march across the continent via the South Pole. A second party under Aeneas Mackintosh in Aurora was landed at a Ross Sea base, with the task of laying supply depots along the expected route of the latter stages of Shackleton’s march, a mission which Shackleton thought straightforward. The ship was 40-years old and had recently returned from Douglas Mawson’s Australasian Antarctic Expedition in need of an extensive refit.
After Aurora’s arrival in Port Chalmers, the organisers of the relief expedition replaced Mackintosh with a new commander and with a substantially different crew. By 25 January he was leading one of the early sledging parties to find a safe landing place and find a way to get the ship back to port. The expedition was eventually completed in April 1917. The party that eventually sailed from Australia in December 1914, only Mackintosh, Ernest Joyce and the ship’s boatswain James “Scotty” Paton had significant experience of Antarctic conditions. Some of the party were last-minute additions: Adrian Donnelly, a railway engineer who had never been to sea, became Aurora’s second engineering officer, while Lionel Hooke, the wireless operator, was an 18-year-old apprentice. Although as a boy he had been inspired by the exploits of polar explorer Nansen, he had no direct experience of Antarctica waters or ice conditions. In the few weeks before the Sound froze over he had to supervise the landing of the most safe parties, and found a safe place for the most of the stores and equipment to be stored. He had to lead one sledging party early in the winter, and took charge of the depot-laying work once the winter was over. By January 25 he took charge of this himself and took the lead in finding a safe location for the party to land. The Ross Sea party eventually sailed to Australia, and Mackintosh decided that the depot work should begin at once.
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This page is based on the article SY Aurora’s drift published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 04, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
