I just finished reading Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage, by Alfred Lansing (1959). Not my usual reading fare, but a truly gripping book.
Endurance recounts the story of the 1914 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, conceived and led by Sir Ernest Shackleton, an Irishman who had previous experience in the Antarctic. The expedition’s goal was to cross the Antarctic continent, traveling through the pole. (The South Pole, incidentally, had only been reached a few years previously (1911) by Roald Amundsen.)
In terms of its stated goal, the Expedition was an abysmal failure. In fact, the aptly-named ship Endurance never technically reached land. It became hopelessly trapped in pack ice in the Weddell Sea. The ship stayed viable, though immobile, for some months, drifting along with the ice, but in October 1915 the pressures of the ice finally got to her and she was crushed. There exists a disturbing photograph of some of the expedition’s sledge dogs looking forlornly at the mangled remains of the Endurance. It is disturbing because of the wreck of the ship, but also because one can imagine the dogs thinking, “I know what happens to dogs in polar adventure stories”.
At this point, the party wisely gave up on crossing the continent and the mission became one of getting back to civilization alive. They camped on the ice and attempted to march toward the northern islands, but movement over the ice with all their gear and the Endurance‘s three lifeboats proved nearly impossible. Ironically, this was in part because the relative warmth of the Antarctic summer had made the surface of the floe slushy and treacherous. After two attempted marches, they set up a camp, dubbed “Patience Camp,” on a floe and waited for the ice to carry them to open water so that they can launch the lifeboats and try to reach one of the islands. This decision was forced on the party when their flow undergoes a series of splits, leaving them on a small and shrinking raft of ice. The three lifeboats were launched and after a difficult voyage across the icy sea, they landed at Elephant Island. While the explorers were happy to be on solid land for the first time in over a year, the island was anything but hospitable. It allowed them only a precarious camp along its northern shore. It was uninhabited and rarely visited, so they would have to take further action if they hoped to be rescued.
Here begins perhaps the most remarkable and harrowing part of the expedition. Shackleton reluctantly decided to split the party. He took five men with him on board the 22-foot lifeboat James Caird and began a voyage of about 900 miles to South Georgia, an island near the Falklands where there was a whaling station. This almost impossible voyage took about two weeks and involved constant danger and discomfort. Due to cloudy weather, navigation was difficult and the James Caird could easily have passed by its intended destination altogether. Remarkably, they landed in South Georgia, but, of course, they land on the south side of the island and the whaling station is on the northern coast. The James Caird, by this time, is barely seaworthy and some of the party aren’t much better off, so Shackleton again split the party, taking two men with him across the island by land. After a difficult crossing of this mountainous and unmapped island, Shackleton reached the whaling settlement. A whaler was promptly sent around the island to retrieve the three party members camped on the southern coast.
The rescue of the Elephant Island camp proves far more problematic. The deadly pack ice that crushed the Endurance blocks multiple attempts by Shackleton to reach the island. It was three months before he reached the remainder of the expedition crew in a borrowed Chilean steam tug, the Yelcho.
Probably the most remarkable thing about the expedition is simply that no one died (barring, of course, the dogs). As far as I can tell, the only permanent damage to a crew member was one man who lost a foot to gangrene. Another remarkable fact is that despite months of horrific stress, the whole expedition proceeded without mutiny, schism, or even extraordinary interpersonal drama. These two facts presumably contribute to the late 20th century deification of Shackleton by the “leadership” industry.
I’ve gone on about the expedition at some length without saying much about the book, which actually says a great deal about it. Lansing was a journalist and knew how to tell a story without getting in its way. He had access to the diaries kept by members of the expedition and so is able to provide some insights into individual personalities, but he avoids armchair psychology. He conveys a sense of the danger and misery faced by the men of the Endurance without slipping into sensationalism. On the whole, a good book and highly recommended.