Today is the birthday of Frank Hurley, the unflappable Australian who brilliantly documented—in spite of endless challenges—one of the greatest survival sagas in human history.
Hurley was born in Sydney in 1885. The purchase of a Kodak Box Brownie when he was seventeen put him on the path to becoming a professional photographer with a successful postcard business and a reputation for being willing to put himself in danger to get a choice shot.
In 1908 the 23-year-old Hurley talked himself into a job as the staff photographer for an Antarctic expedition led by fellow countryman Douglas Mawson. Returning three years later, Hurley produced a documentary from his footage.
In 1914 Hurley parlayed that experience into a similar role on British explorer Ernest Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Amundsen had beaten Scott to the South Pole two years earlier, and Shackleton’s goal was to make the first land crossing of Antarctica. Shackleton would sail his ship, the Endurance, to the north end of the continent and then cross the continent on land. Another ship would sail to the south end of Antarctica and lay supply depots for Shackleton and his men.
Frank Hurley sailed with Shackleton on the Endurance, taking along his still camera, a movie camera, and a portable darkroom in which he developed his heavy plate-glass negatives. Hurley would also pioneer the taking of color photographs on this expedition.
By the time they entered the ice on the Weddell Sea, Hurley had deeply impressed his shipmates. “H is a marvel,” one wrote. “With cheerful Australian profanity, he perambulates alone aloft & everywhere, in the most dangerous & slippery places he can find, content & happy at all times but cursing so if he can get a good or novel picture. Stands bare & hair waving in the wind, where we are gloved & helmeted, he snaps his snaps or winds his handle turning out curses of delight & pictures of Life by the fathom.”
Shackleton’s plans were ruined when the Endurance became trapped in the sea ice before reaching the continent. The ship was slowly crushed, and Shackleton ordered it abandoned in October of 1915. Hurley meticulously and artfully photographed the agonizingly slow death of the Endurance. Shackleton and the crew spent the next six months floating with the ice. Their only hope was to use the ship’s lifeboats to reach one of the nearby islands. Hurley had to leave behind most of his photographic negatives—they were too heavy. After a brutal seven-day voyage in these small, open boats across storm-tossed seas and dangerous ice flows, they reached the uninhabited and rarely visited Elephant Island and made a raw camp.
They were never going to be rescued from Elephant Island, so Shackleton and five men pushed out to sea in a 23-foot lifeboat to try to make it to South Georgia Island, where there was a Norwegian whaling station. Winter was approaching. The men faced gale-force winds and had to chip off the ice that constantly accumulated on the boat. They took turns collapsing on the small boulders with which they had filled the bottom of the boat for ballast. They navigated by dead reckoning. Seventeen days and 800 miles later, they reached South Georgia Island. They had made one of the most amazing boat voyages ever accomplished.
But the tides and storms had forced Shackleton and his men to land on the uninhabited side of the island, and the James Caird was in no shape to get them to the other side. Shackleton decided to take to men and strike out for the whaling station. For thirty-six straight hours, with no map, they crossed over mountain ranges and glissaded down a glacier. Their faces were smeared with whale blubber, their hair was matted and caked with salt, their clothing had been reduced to rags, and they were suffering from frostbite. They met two children, the first humans other than their shipmates that they had seen in eighteen months, who ran from them. Moments later they stumbled into the whaling station. “Who are you,” a whaler asked. “I am Ernest Shackleton” was the response. The Norwegian wept.
The southern winter had come, and Shackleton had to make four attempts to rescue his men on Elephant Island before he finally reached them in a commandeered Chilean ship five months after he had parted from them. All were rescued. Shackleton had not lost a single man during the two-year ordeal.
Unbelievably, a couple of hundred of Hurley’s plate-glass negatives and quite a bit of his movie film also survived. The voyage of the Endurance, while a failure, became legendary. Frank Hurley used his still photographs and movie footage to produce a documentary of the experience, “South,” in 1919.
After his Antarctic exploits, Hurley enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in World War I, and took countless stunning battlefield photos. After the war he became a successful producer of movie documentaries and dramatic films. He was nominated for an Academy Award in 1941. Hurley once again served as a battlefield photographer in World War II, after which he resumed his film career and published several books. He died in 1962.
Frank Hurley’s unforgettable photographs can be found in the book he co-wrote with Shackleton, “South with Endurance,” and Caroline Alexander’s excellent “The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition.” F.A. Worsley’s “Endurance” is a brilliant recounting of Shackleton’s epic adventure. Hurley’s stunning documentary “South” is available on YouTube.
Frank Hurley and Ernest Shackleton on Elephant Island