The 2015 digitisation of Frank Hurley’s Endurance negatives revealed a sixth crew member in The Nightwatchman’s Story, March 1915, hidden behind smoke from the stove. The figure had been invisible in earlier reproductions. The discovery is part of The Endurance Photographs, a new book from Riverside Press in collaboration with the Royal Geographical Society.
Hurley’s pictures came from risk and retouching
Hurley was already an Antarctic veteran when Shackleton recruited him. He had been official photographer on the Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1911 to 1913, and his cinefootage from that trip was released in British cinemas in 1913. The gallery text suggests that film prompted Shackleton to hire him.
Hurley took physical risks for images. He would climb to the extreme end of the top-gallant yard arm, and Alexandra Shackleton is quoted describing him lying down in front of the moving ship and climbing high in the mast with heavy camera equipment. The same passage says Hurley saw himself as an artist first, not a recorder, and would add or subtract details without hesitation.
The expedition photographs show that willingness to shape a scene. A February 1915 image shows the crew building ice-block kennels the sailors called dogloos. Hurley’s caption describes the dogs being placed on shore and all hands building the kennels from ice blocks and snow.
The photographs follow the Endurance from full sail to wreck
The Endurance left South Georgia on 5 December 1914 and reached the Weddell Sea pack-ice days later. There were 28 men on board, including Frank Wild, a British naval officer and Antarctic explorer, and Tom Crean, who had sailed with Captain Scott’s 1910 to 1913 Terra Nova expedition. By 6 January 1915 the ship anchored to a large floe and the dogs had their first run in over a month. Later, with heavy floes slowing progress, the men played football on the ice, split into Port and Starboard watches to keep spirits up.
The winter months brought more than survival routine. Surgeon Alexander Macklin is quoted describing Frank Worsley and Reginald James setting up a large telescope to observe the occultation of stars and work out the exact time. A May 1915 image shows Hurley and Leonard Hussey playing chess and eating sardines during their night watch. In October 1915 new ice pressure strained the timbers, buckled iron floor plates, and forced the ship up and over 30 degrees to port.
The Endurance sank at 5pm on 21 November 1915. Hurley photographed the wreck on the final official visit, and the caption records his words about the stump of the foremast and the funnel being the only signs that the fragmented timbers were once a ship. He saved as many glass-plate negatives as he could carry, then smashed 400 others on the ice.
The new scans change what a reader can see
After the wreck the men tried a 300-mile march across the ice, failed, and set up Ocean Camp on a thick, stable floe. In April 1916 Shackleton and five men launched the James Caird from Elephant Island, aiming to sail 800 miles across the Southern Ocean to South Georgia.
The 2015 digitisation of the original glass plates is what makes The Nightwatchman’s Story different from earlier reproductions. The smoke from the stove no longer hides the sixth crew member. High-definition scans of the negatives, published by Riverside Press with the Royal Geographical Society, let a reader check that detail and others directly.
Ask for The Endurance Photographs at a bookstore or through a library. The title is worth comparing against older printings of Hurley’s work to see which details were lost before the scans.