Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage

“He was, after all, an explorer in the classic mold—utterly self-reliant, romantic, and just a little swashbuckling.”

Shackleton had a somewhat sordid financial past. At various times, he was involved with schemes to “manufacture cigarettes […], a fleet of taxicabs, mining in Bulgaria […] [and] even dig[] for buried treasure” (15). He possessed discipline, romantic idealism, and a highly creative imagination and was someone who wanted to make money, experience adventure, and be free of the necessity to conform. While some criticized him for being overly excited about unrealistic ventures, the author notes that Shackleton shared these characteristics with other great leaders.

“But the great leaders of historical record—the Napoleons, the Nelsons, the Alexanders—have rarely fitted any conventional mold, and it is perhaps an injustice to evaluate them in ordinary terms.”

Shackleton was somewhat capricious in his goals and interests. While highly charismatic, fiercely devoted to his crew, and deeply driven to succeed, he did not ascribe to the military conformity of thought and adherence to procedure that one might expect of a leader in this situation. Lansing, however, suggests that this nonconformity is itself a characteristic of leadership, alluding to several historical individuals who functioned in lofty leadership roles but were ill-suited to conventional measures of judgment and responsibility.

“In his diary that night, Shackleton summed up his feelings: ‘…now comes the actual work itself…the fight will be good.’”

After months of courting financial investors, a part of expeditions that Shackleton loathed, he was quite relieved to be free from English society. He had a keen, realistic appreciation of the challenges to be faced on the expedition and was relieved to be out on the open seas and en route to an incredible adventure.

“‘Finally,’ he thundered, ‘if we run out of food and anyone has to be eaten, you will be first. Do you understand?’”

Shackleton is described as having been capable of terrifying rage. When a stowaway, Blackboro, was found on board and brought to him, Shackleton went into a tirade with his face inches from Blackboro’s. Blackboro is described as smiling slowly in reaction, as he realized that Shackleton’s performance had been for the benefit of his audience. Nevertheless, the prospect of resorting to cannibalism was a real one in polar exploration. While the Endurance’s crew would ultimately avoid this survival measure, Shackleton here unwittingly foreshadowed the dangers they would face.

“Few men unaccustomed to it can fight off its effects altogether, and it has driven some men mad.”

Previous expeditions to the Antarctic experienced devastating emotional effects due to the polar night, which demonstrates The Danger and Majesty of Nature. The Endurance crew enjoyed a good rapport, and most of the men were well-liked and easygoing. Additionally, the men entertained themselves by singing and listening to Leonard Hussey, the meteorologist, play his banjo. Every Saturday night the men were issued a measure of grog, and they toasted far away loves: “To our sweethearts and wives […] [m]ay they never meet” (52).

“When he got back to the ship, Greenstreet wrote in his diary: ‘Lucky for us if we don’t get any pressure like that against the ship for I doubt whether any ship could stand a pressure that will force blocks like that up.’”

Despite their optimism regarding better weather conditions, crewmembers observed unprecedented strength in the breaking ice floes. Greenstreet, the first officer, and Wild, the second-in-command, had been running the sled dogs when they observed the collision of two, nine-feet thick ice floes, which “rose as easily as if they had been two pieces of cork” (59). Shackleton was aware of the destructive potential of the floes pummeling the ship, as were the more seasoned sailors aboard the vessel.

“Many of the tabular bergs appear like huge warehouses and grain elevators, but more look like the creations of some brilliant architect when suffering from delirium, induced by gazing too long on this damned infernal stationary pack […].”

Here, Captain Frank Worsley writes about the constant presence of ominous icebergs that were, in effect, suffocating the Endurance. The ship, originally built for whaling, was not built to withstand the pressure of the ice. While the men were initially awed by the majestic beauty of the ice, they came to fear the damage that the icebergs were capable of inflicting upon the ship.

“‘She’s going, boys,’ he said. ‘I think it’s time to get off.’”

Shackleton and the crew persevered for weeks as the Endurance was buffeted by ice floes. By October 23, the ship was decimated by pressure and became uninhabitable due to damage. Despite the best efforts of the crew to maintain steam power by manning the pumps constantly, it was clear that the Endurance was going to sink. The crew later described themselves as so exhausted that they were actually relieved to leave the ship and set up camp on the ice.

“May the Lord help you to do your duty and guide you / through all the dangers by land and sea. / May you see the Works of the Lord and His Wonders in the deep.”

Prior to his departure from England, Queen Mother Alexandra presented Shackleton with a Bible. She inscribed the flyleaf with this message, and he kept it as a treasured possession. After ordering his men to relieve themselves of all unnecessary items in order to diminish the load of the sled dogs, Shackleton tore out a few favorite pages from the Bible and, with great drama, dropped it on the ice floe in order to encourage the men to follow his example.

“From studying the outcome of past expeditions, he believed that those who burdened themselves with equipment to meet every contingency had fared much worse than those that had sacrificed total preparedness for speed.”

Lansing characterizes Shackleton as the ultimate pragmatist: He believed that he was personally responsible for the survival of every man on the ship and took stringent steps to ensure it. He led by example by ridding himself of the Bible given to him by the Queen Mother, as well as a gold cigarette case and several gold sovereigns. For Lansing, this illustrates the man’s genius in leadership: He publicly performed odious tasks himself before requiring the same of his men. In the further spirit of pragmatism, he ordered Macklin and Crean to kill litters of huskie puppies prior to the journey, as everyone who was included on the expedition had to be able to “pull their weight” (81).

“And yet they had adjusted with surprisingly little trouble to their new life, and most of them were quite sincerely happy.”

The crew of the Endurance had endured months of entrapment by the ice and were now encamped on ice floes in the middle of the Arctic winter, yet they remained surprisingly amicable. Undeterred by below-zero temperatures and the brutally difficult tasks involved in staying alive, they excelled under pressure, underscoring the potency of The Will to Survive.

“He also assigned Hurley to his own tent, which appealed to Hurley’s snobbishness and also minimized his opportunities for gathering other latent malcontents around himself.”

Lansing again depicts Shackleton as a natural leader who relied upon his gut reaction. Certain crewmembers, such as Hurley, were identified by Shackleton as individuals who might spread discontent among the men should they feel slighted by their leaders; therefore, Shackleton singled such personalities out for special attention and catered to them as much as possible in order to avoid trouble.

“There was always a barrier, an aloofness, which kept him apart.”

Shackleton was loved and respected by his crew. Although he was very much aware of his own authority, he made a point of sharing the same housing, food, and clothing given to his men. Nevertheless, his sense of responsibility for the well-being of the men was so strong that he sometimes seemed aloof.

“This indomitable self-confidence of Shackleton’s took the form of optimism.”

After a lengthy march to a safer locale and some anxiety about the quantity of remaining food stores, Shackleton refused permission to allow crewmembers to retrieve three seals killed by Orde-Lees. This decision struck the crew as arbitrary and capricious; however, Shackleton’s capacity for optimism under all circumstances did not allow him to consider the possibility of failing to deliver his men to safety, even if the decision momentarily demoralized the men.

“‘It is spoken of with reverence,’ Hurley observed, ‘and wood must be touched when commenting thereon.’”

In addition to the perils of camping on ice floes, the crew was at the mercy of the winds. Their hope was that northeasterly winds would blow them closer to their intended destination of Paulet Island. On several occasions, winds actually blew the floes in the wrong direction, sending the men further away from civilization than they were already.

“I must confess that I cannot see that they will be of much more use to us.”

As food stores became more seriously depleted in the camp, Shackleton determined that feeding the dogs was a luxury that the expedition could no longer afford. While other teams of dogs had been shot previously, Macklin’s dogs had been preserved; however, it became clear that they must be killed as well. Macklin, who was very attached to his animals, reacted in an exhausted, indifferent, fatalistic manner to Shackleton’s order.

“‘God forbid we should get that,’ wrote Greenstreet, ‘for I doubt if we would survive.’”

Always at the mercy of random elements, the men drifted far to the west, eliminating their hopes of landing on either Clarence Island or Elephant Island. They also feared being cast out to the dreaded Drake Passage by the winds if the ice pack broke, as they doubted their ability to survive the winds and tides in their small boats. The situation worsened when the floe on which Patience Camp was located cracked in half, necessitating immediate evacuation.

“Shackleton in the Caird doubted that some men would survive the night.”

The men realized that they had been blown terribly off course, and Shackleton announced that the new destination would be Hope Bay, about 130 miles away. Sleepless, starving, freezing, and physically decimated, the crew no longer camped on the floes at night due to fear of having the ice crack beneath them. They shivered so violently while overnighting in the open boats that they felt it was preferable to row. Shackleton’s dream of bringing all the men home alive started to fade.

“A ration of nut food and biscuits was issued, but the men’s thirst was now so intense that few of them could eat it.”

In tandem with the physical and psychological stress induced by decomposing ice floes, frostbite, and starvation, the men experienced the physical repercussions of a lack of drinking water while they staffed the boats. Consequently, they became so dehydrated that it was impossible for them to swallow the meager rations that were available to them in the boats.

“Solid, unsinkable, immovable, blessed land.”

When the boats converged on a small beach on Elephant Island, the men walked on a surface other than ice for the first time in 497 days. They were frozen, starved, and exhausted, yet, almost inexplicably, they were all alive. While the boats were unloaded, Rickenson had a heart attack. Additionally, Greenstreet’s frostbitten feet allowed him only to hobble, and Blackboro had to be pulled up on the beach due to the onset of gangrene on his severely frostbitten feet. Nonetheless, the statistical likelihood of Shackleton leading the entire group to land without a single fatality was amazingly small.

“We sought shelter as we could find…but it was only the warmth of the dead penguins that saved our hands.”

Although Elephant Island was initially perceived as a haven, it became clear that it too was a brutal physical environment with little protection from roaring winds. The winds blew the tents to shreds, and the men slept in wet sleeping bags on the beach under a heavy snowfall. When Shackleton ordered them to kill penguins, the men experienced frostbitten hands once again. Their only relief was the warmth provided by the carcasses of the dead birds.

“Both groups knew they might never see one another again.”

Shackleton and his party of five men embarked on the desperate expedition to South Georgia well aware that the likelihood of their surviving the journey was remote. Similarly, those left behind on Elephant Island faced another winter season when their survival would depend upon hunting sufficient food and caring for several men with critical medical conditions. The farewell breakfast was intended to be festive and included extra rations, but the parting of the two groups was bittersweet. The men were savvy enough to realize that they might be seeing each other for the last time.

“Not much refinement here—‘Come outside and open your mouth’—no cocaine or anesthesia.”

Doctors Macklin and McIlroy provided medical care for the crewmembers, treating everything from an infected tooth to the dry gangrene that Blackboro developed on his foot due to frostbite. Hudson, the navigator, developed a large, painful abscess on the buttock and apparent psychological trauma as a result of the experience of the boat journey.