Part IV

A map of Elephant Island

This section of the book chronicles the crew's journey by sea. They go out on the three boats, into the frozen antarctic waters. Their journey is perilous, the crew is battered by the water, and frozen in place. They begin to get frostbitten, with Greenstreet's feet becoming almost entirely frostbitten. The ships soon decide to split up, with the Docker going out on it's own, while the Caird and the Willis went tethered together. The men row to exhaustion trying to get to Elephant Island. The men become dehydrated, and seasick, making an already difficult journey all the worse. Their exhaustion finally pays off however when they reach Elephant Island. Lancing writes, "For the first time in 497 days they were on land. Solid, unsinkable immovable blessed land. This seems to be the turning point in the story, for all the rest of it, they were either in the endurance, stuck on a floe, or in their life ships struggling to get to land.