[2] Aurora, commanded by Captain Aeneas Mackintosh, left Hobart for Antarctica on 24 December 1914 and arrived in McMurdo Sound, with the Ross Sea Party, on 14 January 1915.

He had two problems here; first, he was inexperienced in these waters; secondly he was handicapped by Shackleton's prior instruction to Mackintosh that the ship be anchored somewhere north of the Glacier Tongue,[b] to reduce the risks of its being trapped in the frozen seas around Hut Point – the fate of Captain Scott's RRS Discovery in 1902–04.

Since Discovery, no ship had attempted to winter in the Sound – Nimrod and Terra Nova had returned to New Zealand – and the number of sheltered anchorages north of the tongue was very limited.

The ship, attached to a large ice-floe, was blown out of the Sound and into the Ross Sea with no means of control, unable to raise steam, and with weather conditions likely to worsen.

[c] During the succeeding perilous weeks, as the ice-bound Aurora drifted northwards, roughly parallel to the coast in the direction of Cape Adare, Stenhouse twice came close towards ordering abandonment of the ship and risking a dangerous sledging journey on the ice.

Eventually, the combined governments of New Zealand, Australia and Great Britain agreed jointly to meet the costs of the rescue provided that they exercised full control over the mission.

Stenhouse still considered that he was the Aurora's commander and assumed that he would lead the relief expedition when the ship was ready to sail, but the representatives of the governments decided that he was too inexperienced.

[i] On 26 September 1917, the ship engaged and sank a U-boat in the Irish sea, an action which earned Stenhouse a Distinguished Service Cross (DSC) on 17 November.

[8] After promotion to lieutenant and a spell in command of the schooner HMS Ianthe, he joined Shackleton on a mission to Murmansk, to equip and train the anti-Bolshevik North Russian Expeditionary Force.

On 12 September 1941 he was reported missing, presumed killed, when a merchant navy vessel in which he was travelling as a passenger struck a mine, exploded and sank in the Red Sea.