At age 21 in 1914, he signed articles and shipped aboard the Endurance as a tender of the coal fire maintained on the vessel.
[1] With the other castaways from the Endurance, Holness was forced to abandon the crushed ship as it fought its final battle with the ice.
The exploration party, led by Sir Ernest Shackleton, camped on ice floes that drifted north through the Weddell Sea.
At one point a pancake-shaped plate of ice, on which the castaways had built a flimsy camp, physically split in two directly under Holness's tent and sleeping bag.
[1] With his fellow fireman-stoker William Stephenson, Holness was one of four members of the Endurance crew to be denied the Polar Medal.