1/21/2024 0 Comments Endurance book georgia![]() This is the group known as the Ross Sea Party, who were tasked with setting up supply depots for the second half of Shackleton’s polar crossing. Meanwhile, on the other side of the continent, the other contingent of the expedition was encountering their own troubles. Yet this eventful tale is only half the story. Thus commenced months of Shackleton scrambling to find a suitable boat, heading south, and then being repelled by ice-until, finally, on his fourth attempt, Shackleton got through and rescued his crew, with no lives lost. The three sailors who had been left on the other side of South Georgia (too weak to make the hike) were picked up, and then Shackleton began organizing the far more difficult task of retrieving the 22 men stranded on Elephant Island. Once there, he was finally able to summon aid. Eventually they set out on the Endurance’s lifeboats and, after five awful days in horrible seas, the crew of 28 reached the isolated and desolate Elephant Island.ĭeciding that rescue was unlikely from such a remote place, Shackleton and five others took one of the lifeboats and, after two weeks, reached the scarcely more hospitable South Georgia, where he had to endure hurricane-force winds and climb an unforgiving landscape in order to arrive at the whaling station on the other side of the island. The crew then set up a camp on the ice flow, floating for several months more, hoping the winds and waves would push them toward land. They drifted helplessly for months, until the ice finally crushed and sank the ship. But his ship did not even reach the southern continent, instead getting trapped in floating ice during their approach. In 1914, Ernest Shackleton set out on the Endurance on a mission to cross Antarctica via the pole. Endurance by Alfred Lansing is one of the greatest survival stories, and I greatly enjoyed the book.The bare facts of this story speak for themselves. ![]() All crew members were eventually rescued after nearly two years at sea. The failed expedition was remarkable in many ways, but the crew's courage and fortitude in the face of extreme adversity were only made possible by Shackleton's resilient leadership. It is a battle against a tireless enemy in which man never actually wins the most that he can hope for is not to be defeated. Unlike the land, where courage and the simple will to endure can often see a man through, the struggle against the sea is an act of physical combat, and there is no escape. Here is how the passage goes: The sea is a different sort of enemy. Near the end of the book, I was stunned by the author’s description of Shackleton’s state of mind when he and a handful of crew members sailed one of their 22-and-a-half-foot lifeboat back to South Georgia in the open sea. Having previously served in the military, this story of camaraderie deeply resonated with me. Camped on an ice field for months, they hunted seals, cooked with blubber, fought off sea leopards and killed their huskies to avoid starvation-all while trying not to freeze or go insane. With three lifeboats, essential equipment and stores, the 28 crew members were left completely exposed to the elements. Damaged by the pressure of the ice, the Endurance was abandoned and the crew eventually witnessed its sinking on November 21, 1915. The ship and the crew remained stuck in place for 10 months, surviving the polar night and the cold Antarctic winter. Navigating the Weddell Sea, the Endurance neared the Antarctic continent, but got stuck in packed ice on January 18, 1915. On December 5, 1914, Shackleton’s expedition departed the whaling station from South Georgia not knowing that they would only regain contact with civilization 532 days later. From there, they headed to South Georgia Island in the South Atlantic. Setting sail from England, the Endurance stopped in Argentina to pick up mission-essential huskies the crew had ordered from Canada. ![]() Now commanding his own crew, Shackleton’s mission was to not only reach the South Pole, but to cross the whole of Antarctica with sled dogs. Though no one had reached the South Pole at the time, Shackleton had previously come 112 miles from it as part of another expedition in 1907-1909. ![]() Lansing pieced together the book based on journal entries of crew members and interviews with survivors. Published in 1959, Alfred Lansing's Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage tells the true story of the 1914-1917 expedition to Antarctica led by explorer Ernest Shackleton. His answer was nearly instant: Endurance…the story of Shackleton! He spoke highly of it, so I bought the book without much investigation. I recently asked a friend to share one of his top 5 books of all time.
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