The assault continued through August and September. The carpenters worked continuously to shore up the internal structure of the ship as the external pressure increased. McNish and the other carpenters drove wedges and braces into the hull framing, working against what they knew was an unwinnable fight. The pumps ran around the clock.
On October 23, three floes converged on the ship simultaneously and split it almost in half. For three days the crew worked to save her, bailing and pumping and reinforcing with whatever materials they had. On October 27, Shackleton stopped them. The ship was not salvageable. It was time to leave.
The men lowered the three lifeboats — the James Caird, the Dudley Docker, and the Stancomb Wills — onto the ice beside the ship. They loaded them with supplies: food for three months, tents, sleeping bags, the items Shackleton had decided were worth the weight. He limited each man to two pounds of personal belongings. He demonstrated the seriousness of this limit by throwing his own gold watch and cigarette case on the ice and keeping only three things: a page from the Bible, a small gold medallion given to him by the Queen, and Hussey’s banjo.
Before they left the ship, they tied the Union Jack to the mast. If the Endurance was going to sink, it would sink with its colors flying.
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## Ocean Camp and Patience Camp
The plan was to march across the ice toward Paulet Island, 346 miles away, where a previous shipwrecked crew had left a cache of food. After two days of exhausting effort dragging the boats and supplies across broken ice, the men had covered less than two miles. Shackleton called a halt.