The Uruguayan government loaned him a trawler, the Instituto de Pesca No. 1. On June 10 he tried again. Ice again stopped him, this time 100 miles short of Elephant Island. He tried a third time in July, chartering a schooner called the Emma from Punta Arenas. The Emma got within 100 miles and was turned back by ice and mechanical problems.
Three attempts. Three failures. The season was advancing. Each failed attempt meant more weeks for the men on Elephant Island, through the depth of the Antarctic winter, with no knowledge that anyone was trying.
The Chilean government offered the use of a small steam tug, the Yelcho, stationed at Punta Arenas. Its commander was Luis Alberto Pardo Villalon, a 33-year-old naval pilot, known by the abbreviated rank of Piloto. Pardo had proposed the mission himself, and when the Chilean government agreed, he made it clear to his crew that the voyage would be dangerous and that no one was obligated to go. His crew volunteered to a man.
The Yelcho was not an Antarctic vessel. It had been built in Scotland in 1906, purchased by the Chilean Navy in 1908, and put to work as a harbor tug and lighthouse supply ship along the Chilean coast. It had no radio, no proper heating for Antarctic conditions, no electric lighting, and no double hull. It was, in Pardo’s own assessment, poorly suited to the waters it was about to enter. He wrote to his father before departing: “Two considerations make me face these dangers: save explorers and give glory to Chile.”