Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage

Alfred Lansing

In 1914, Ernest Shackleton had a dream to be the first man to cross the Antarctic continent. His plan was to land one party on one side and have them march to the pole and back, leaving stores along the way. Shackleton and his crew would land on the opposite side of the continent and carry only enough provisions to reach the pole. From there they would pick up the supplies left by the other team as they marched north.

It never occurred to Shackleton that if the supply team failed, he'd never make the last half of his trip. Failure simply wasn't in the plan. Had this plan succeeded, the resulting book would have been well worth reading. Its failure resulted in a story that is impossible to put down.

I'm not going to give the entire story because you need to read this book. Shackleton's boat, Endurance, becomes trapped and eventually crushed by polar ice. The crew abandons her and begins a 17-month trip that takes them hundreds of miles across ice and water. When it becomes impossible to take the entire group of thirty men any further, Shackleton chooses five crewmen and sets off across 800 miles of ocean to find a tiny island where he knows there's a whaling station. When his small ship lands on the opposite side of the craggy island he takes two men and crosses the island to reach the whaling station. Over the next three months he makes four attempts to rescue his crew and eventually succeeds.

This much of the story is in the history books. But the inside story Lansing tells of Shackleton and his men, and how each obstacle in the journey is overcome, is compelling.

I found this particular account typical of Shackleton's innate leadership skill. The men are about to leave their camp on the ice beside their crushed ship:

... in the afternoon Shackleton called all hands together into the center of the circle of tents. His face was grave. He explained it was imperative that all weight be reduced to the barest minimum. Each man, he said, would be allowed the clothes on his back, plus two pairs of mittens, six pairs of socks, two pairs of boots, a sleeping bag, a pound of tobacco - and two pounds of personal gear. Speaking with the utmost conviction, Shackleton pointed out that no article was of any value when weighed against their ultimate survival, and he exhorted them to be ruthless in ridding themselves of every unnecessary ounce, regardless of its value.

After he had spoken, he reached under his parka and took out a gold cigarette case and several gold sovereigns and threw them into the snow at his feet.

Then he opened the Bible Queen Alexandra had given them and ripped out the flyleaf [inscribed by the Queen] and the page containing the Twenty-third Psalm. He also tore out the page from the Book of Job with this verse on it:

"Out of whose womb came the ice?
And the hoary frost of Heaven, who hath gendered it?
The waters are hid as with a stone.
And the face of the deep is frozen."

Then he laid the Bible in the snow and walked away.

It was a dramatic gesture, but that was the way Shackleton wanted it. From studying the outcome of past expeditions, he believed that those that burdened themselves with equipment to meet every contingency had fared much worse than those that had sacrificed total preparedness for speed.

Drop everything and read this book.