Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage

Adventure stories can often be captivating if the story is told the right way. In the case of a non- fiction adventure, a solid bit of storytelling can leave the reader amazed and astonished, often in a more surprised state of mind than if the book was fictional. Such is the case with Endurance. For those not familiar with the journey, it all began on a relatively small, sea- going vessel. Ernest Shakleton was a man on a mission. He wanted to not just reach the South Pole- something that had already been done- but to traverse the entire Antarctic continent. He wanted to be the first person to accomplish such a feat, and he was bound and determined to make his goal a reality. Things did not go as planned, and Shackleton and his team were forced to focus on the only thing that mattered: Survival. Their shop was wrecked beyond repair and he and his crew were forced to live on floating ice sheets, food rations, seal blubber for fuel, and anything else to keep them alive. Their only hope was to reach one of the nearby outposts of civilization. But would they all make it back alive? Or would the merciless Antarctic cold prove too difficult an obstacle to surmount? I have heard about Ernest Shackleton and his voyage, but until I read this book, I didn’t know the specifics of how it turned out. The book is written in great detail and I found myself turning the pages quickly, anxious to know what would happen next. There were many points that would have caused some people to lose hope, but Shackleton was determined to get himself and his crew back to safety. This book’s strongest point is the writing itself. The descriptions are vivid, and chilling as expected. You feel like you are right there with Shackleton and his team; feeling the cold wind, yearning for a good meal, hoping to get the feeling back in your limbs, and dreaming of a good night’s sleep. But more than anything, your hope is to survive. Nothing matters unless you can escape the frigid conditions and eventually make your way back to civilization. One surprise with this book is that it includes a picture section. Like any good explorer, Shackleton made sure to have a team of photographers with him and the film managed to survive. There is one spoiler alert I should point out: If you want the suspense to continue, you may want to skip at least the last picture in this section, since it identifies the survivors. The Antarctic continent is among the harshest, if not the harshest, climate on the planet. Ernest Shackleton’s voyage to this unforgiving land and his attempt to rescue his crew are brought to life in the pages of Endurance. It’s a fantastic read and a story you will never forget.

I have seen this book (and was mildly aware of the story) for years but was just not drawn to it. Somehow it just didn’t capture my interest. Yet, I was assigned this book as part of a class assignment in leadership development (SLI anyone?) I found that most of the books in this class ranged from “meh” to not bad. This book, however, really was a hit. I have since picked up five additional books about The Endurance and the phenomenal leadership by Sir Earnest Shackleton. He truly is a leader in a class all his own. Many leadership books I’ve read (and I’ve read many) tend to focus on modern business models or military operations. While there are some absolutely outstanding examples and lessons to be learned I really enjoyed the nature of the lessons to be found in this book. Rather than profit margins or explosions of valor and courage - this is survival against impossible odds and “the grind”. The day-after-day toil which cannot be stopped and yet must be raged against. The author took a story which - at one point - amounted to day after day of cold, wet, fear, suffering, setback, rinse, and repeat - and managed to keep it page turning and captivating. His story telling touched the technical aspects of the tale but always stayed focused on the humanity of it all. I felt connected to the story and the men. Paired with an excellent stand-alone companion book Leading at The Edge, by Dennis T. Perkins, I extracted more leadership concepts, lessons, and anecdotes than any leadership book I’ve read recently. It’s way up there with Call Sign Chaos and It’s Your Ship. I highly recommend Endurance as a read whether it’s for the enjoyment of reading, simply learning about one of the greatest stories of survival ever told, or for the lessons in leadership. You will no doubt enjoy this read.

ENDURANCE SHACKLETON'S INCREDIBLE VOYAGE by Alfred Lansing is a 280-page book about a voyage to Antarctica, where the goal was to cross the continent on foot, and where this goal was prevented when the ship, the Endurance, became permanently trapped in ice. The ship became trapped at a point about 30 miles from the LUITPOLD COAST, followed by dragging of the trapped ship by the ice to a point 800 miles away from the Luitpold Coast, and at this more distant point, the trapped ship finally sank. After the ship sank, the men continued on foot, but most of their travel was provided by the movement of their ice floe. The movement of the ice floe brought them a further 500 miles, and to within 100 miles of their final destination (Elephant Island). When the ice floe broke up, the men set out in three small boats, and traveled this final 100 miles. Aside from the name of the ship, the word "endurance" occurs in only one context, namely that of "bladder endurance." Bladder endurance was a problem when the men were camping in the stone shelters on Elephant Island, and needed to use a common 2-gallon gasoline can as a urinal at night (page 204). The book begins on August 1, 1914, when the Endurance set sail from London. The story ends on August 30, 1916, when Shackleton managed to land his rescue ship on Elephant Island, Antarctica, to retrieve the men who were left behind. The expedition was called, IMPERIAL TRANS-ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION, and all 28 men are listed on page 1 of the book. The book has two maps, the first tracking the location where Endurance was trapped (Jan. 19, 1915) in ice, the location where Endurance was crushed and therefore abandoned (Oct. 27, 1915), the location of the men's journey on the moving ice floe, and the final 100 mile stretch where the men took three small boats to Elephant Island to land on April 9, 1916. The second map shows the entire journey of Endurance from South Georgia Island to just off the coast of Antarctica, and the journey of one of the three small boats (the Caird) from Elephant Island back to South Georgia Island, where Shackleton successfully rounded up a rescue party. There are six black and white photos, taken by crew member Frank Hurley. The photos show the Endurance locked in ice, the Endurance after being crushed, Frank Hurley posing with Ernest Shackleton by their tent on an ice floe (taken on May 10, 1916), and a photo of the rescue vessel arriving on August 30, 1916. There are also reproductions of two paintings by the ship's artist. THE WRITING. Aside from a handful of literary excesses in the first several pages, this book is absolutely devoid of journalistic fluff. There is no attempt at re-creating conversations. There is no attempt at drama or pathos. There is no attempt to impress the reader with difficult words or with long sentences. I love Mr. Lansing's writing style. Mr. Lansing prefers to remain invisible, and his writing comes so naturally, and the result is that I felt like I was one of the crew members when I read the book. CLIFF HANGERS. The narrative provides a dozen or so cliff hangers, where the reader is aware that the men are faced with the threat of immediate death. These threats include savage storms at sea, having an ice floe disintegrate under the men's camping area, threats of having the three small boats crushed between ice floes, and threats of freezing to death. In the final chapter, when Mr. Shackleton set foot on South Georgia Island, and attempted to cross the Island on foot, he repeatedly took pathways that led to a dead-end that terminated at the top of a high cliff, producing the threat of death due to lack of food and exposure to the cold. OPTIMISM AND COURAGE. In a broader sense, the book is an illustration of courage in the face of constant life-threatening cold, and in the face of the threat of being lost at sea. The book provides little explicit guidance on the meaning of leadership, but it is easy to read between the lines. We learn that Mr. Shackleton never expressed thoughts of hopelessness, the fact that none of the men were drama queens (see, page 40), the fact that the men possessed a good sense of humor (see page 42), were incapable of malice (page 78), and were willing to join in singing (pages 17, 45, 75). What also helped keep the men in good spirits was that one man had a banjo, and that there was ususually plenty of powdered milk, canned beets and cauliflowers, and biscuits on hand. My own personnal opinion is as follows. Although it is difficult to eliminate drama queens during the job interview process, it is very easy to keep employees in good spirits by providing free food at regular intervals. EXCERPTS. We learn that the trip was funded by James Caird ($120,000), the UK government ($50,000), and the Royal Geographic Society ($5,000). We learn that second in command was Frank Wild, who had accompanied Shackleton on earlier trips to Antarctica. We learn that Endurance set sail from London the week that World War I started. The Endurance had three sails and a coal-fired 350 hp steam engine, that she was designed by Aanderud Larsen, and was built in Norway. Frank Hurley, the photographer, had already been to Antarctica with another explorer (Douglas Mawson). Sixtynine dogs were also brought along, though they never had a chance to pull the sledges over Antarctica. DISTASTER #1. On page 30, Endurance gets permanently trapped in ice. Although this entrapment occurred only 60 miles away from land, the ship was trapped in an ice floe that has a surface that was too "hummocky" to risk travel (page 34). DISASTER #2. By page 36, a quarter of the dogs had died, and the cause was foot long red worms. DISASTER #3. We learn that the ship's order of phonograph needles was discovered, instead, to consist of a box of 5,000 sewing needles (page 43). This is not really a disaster, but it is amusing to recount this. DISASTER #4. On page 59, the ship, which had been trapped for nine months, was finally crushed, and the men rescued their mittens, tobacco, surgical instruments, banjo, photographic negatives, cases of sugar, flour, rice, barley, and jam, stoves, and toothbrushes (page 80). DISASTER #5. Sometimes walk through the deep slush on the ice floe was very slow, for example, after one five hour walk the party had advanced only a half mile (page 93). At one point, a sea leopard attacked Thomas Orde-Lees, and he was rescued by Frank Wild, who shot the sea leopard, which weighed 1,100 pounds (page 102). DISASTER #6. The banjo-playing proved to be torture, because Leonard Hussey (meteorologist) knew only six tunes (page 104). It is amusing to recount this, even though it is not really a disaster. DISASTER #7. The men complained that their meat-based diet (seals, sea leopards, penguins, dog pemmican) was causing flatulence and a "squeaky gut." Ice was used for toilet paper, and ice freezing on the skin caused chronically unhealed sores (page 112). DISASTER #8. The continued drift of the ice floe brought the men too far north to be able to debark at Paulet Island, leaving open the possibility of debarking at islands further to the north, such as Elephant Island or drifting even further north to be lost at sea in the dreaded DRAKE PASSAGE (pages 117-121, 124, 134). DISASTER #9. Food shortages with concomitant sub-zero temperatures was an occasional threat (page 122). The continued failure of the ice pack to disintegrate prevented the men from sailing to land, which at one point, was only 42 miles away (page 123). The ice was too lumpy to cross, and the floes were too close to each other for a safe sailing. DISASTER #10. Eventually, the ice floes used by the men for camping started to break apart (pages 128, 132, 137) and on page 138, the three small boats were launched. Killer whales surfaced on all sides of the boats (page 141), and masses of churning ice caused by rip tides threatened to overturn the boats (page 141). It is interesting to point out that the small boats were caulked with seal blood, or with cotton lamp wick and oil paints (pages 85, 107). CONCLUSION. This book is an excellent model to other historians, as a guide on how to write history books. Love this book! The last time I read a book like this was in elementary school, when I read THE RAFT by ROBERT TRUMBULL. The Raft is another non-fiction book about survival at sea. I read The Raft during the time of the Seattle World's Fair (ha, ha, not really recently).

Incredible book! A must-read for history buffs!

I seem to gravitate toward survival-type stories (I'm a fan of Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild and Into Thin Air), so I decided to buy this when I saw it on Amazon's top 100 pick list. As it happened, I was home sick when the book arrived, and I wound up reading it in just two days. It was an engrossing read. Although I already knew the basic storyline and how things end, that didn't detract from my enjoyment as I went along. What struck me is that the author has a very low-key writing style, so where someone else might get melodramatic with all the trials and challenges Shackleton's crew confronts, you are left to form your own conclusions, unclouded by hysteria or over-excitement when they have to abandon ship when it runs aground on ice, for instance. I also appreciated that writing style when I unexpectedly came across references to seal clubbing and killing of the Huskies. They were both necessary to the group's survival, but being an animal lover, I don't usually subject myself to reading that kind of thing. There is a lot of discussion of ice in this book. How water freezes, contracts and expands. It's a central part of the book. You'll walk away having new-found respect for the unforgiving predominance of Nature in one of the world's last untamed places. The book will also give you a fresh appreciation for the lengths Man will go to in order to survive. The group's survival was in large part due to the tenacity and leadership abilities of Shackleton himself, when psychological factors were as important as physical challenges in such an unforgiving environment. I would have been very interested if the author had added details in an epilogue telling us, briefly, of what became of Shackleton and the others after they were rescued. Did Shackleton lead any more expeditions? did he settle down to a more conventional life? What about the others? After surviving an ordeal like this, it would be interesting to know to what purpose the men devoted the rest of their lives.

Excellent true story of Antarctica exploration! Highly recommend!

Amazing journey to Antarctica that didn’t go as planned. Great survival story on the high seas and the Arctic ice. Takes place in 1915 when men were men.

Excellent book. Be sure to read the Introduction and Preface for details about how the book came to be and the extensive materials and interviews that give it such a human and detailed study of the trip.

Hay seres que saben perseverar y no se rinden nunca. Desde artistas que logran una Capilla Sixtina, hasta este inolvidable aventurero y capitán Shackleton. Inevitable, acabé llorando. Conozco muy poquito de esa región y no puedo creer esa aventura. El ser humano puede superar todo si esta dispuesto.

Adorei ler este livro. Muito bom o relato dessa experiência incrível. Tive que pesquisar o significado de algumas palavras em inglês, que eram novas para mim, mas a leitura fluiu bem, porque a curiosidade vai te puxando ao longo do livro.

A very nice book on a daring adventure

Love the book. Could not stop reading till last page, very interesting and well written.

What a reading experience! All challenges I have experienced became insignificant.