User:LumpyGoatmeal



Do the Humpty Hump

Hijinks on the High Seas


Before leaving, Shackleton instructed Frank Wild that he was to assume full command as soon as  the James Caird departed, and that should the journey  fail, he was to attempt to take the party to Deception Island the following spring. The James Caird was launched from Elephant Island on 24 April 1916. The wind was a moderate south-westerly, which aided a swift getaway, and the boat was quickly out of sight of the land.

Shackleton ordered Worsley to set a course due north, instead of directly for South Georgia, to get clear of the menacing ice-fields that were beginning to form. Almost as soon as they were over the horizon they were able to remove their oilskins to enjoy the warm sunshine, and by nightfall they were approaching Ibiza.

It was at this point that Shackleton's nefarious plan entered phase two, as the lusty seadogs sat outside an Irish pub drinking pints and giggling about how they'd fooled the remaining 21 men into thinking they were trapped miles from inhabited land. What had actually happened was that the entire expedition had been an elaborate practical joke by Shackleton whereby he intended to trick a load of sailors into thinking they were stuck at the Antarctic when in actual fact they were pretty close to Ibiza the whole time. Shackleton sniggered uncontrollably through his fingers as they downed their pints. The course was now changed to head directly for the next pub. They now had to wait approximately six months to make the joke as funny as possible. They bought some dodgy mandy off a local boy and prepared to hit the town.



Shackleton's chat was on point and the boys had a wonderful holiday in Ibiza. They met lots of fit girls and hung about at the pool. It was proper banter. After two weeks they flew back to Britain, each vowing they would go again next year. They also had a rate good laugh at the 21 sailors who thought they were trapped and who must have assumed Shackleton and his crew had been lost in high South Atlantic seas. Nothing could be further from the truth because they were practically walking distance from Ibiza and in fact the water was so shallow all the way there that you could pretty much just wade across it. Whatevs.

Shackleton got bare numbers and for a while after he came back it stung when he peed; he never used protection ever because he didn't like it. But the stinging cleared up eventually, though even after the pain subsided he had to deal with the milky butter that seeped and slopped from his withered instrument. He told everyone that this was a side effect of scurvy and they totally bought it. Shackleton had a wee chuckle over his chicken mcnuggets.

Finally, after about six months, they sailed back and told the others that they totally got them. Dude, they were so not happy bunnies. But it went down in history as one of the greatest and most daring practical jokes in the history of transatlantic buffoonery.