Recent Reading: Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage

Perhaps less well known than the other early polar explorers, Ernest Shackleton was a remarkable man. Here are a few lines that give something of the flavor of the book:

…while Shackleton was undeniably out of place, even inept, in a great many everyday situations, he had a talent — that he shared with only a handful of men throughout history — genuine leadership. He was, as one of his men put it, “the greatest leader that ever came on God’s earth, bar none.” For all his blind spots and inadequacies, Shackleton merited this tribute:

For scientific leadership give me Scott; for swift and efficient travel, Amundsen; but when you are in a hopeless situation, when there seems no way out, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton.

This, then, was the drake passage, the most dreaded bit of ocean on the globe — and rightly so. Here nature has been given a proving ground on which to  demonstrate what she can do if left alone. The results are impressive.

The crossing of South Georgia has been accomplished only by one other party. That was almost forty years later, in 1955, by a British survey team under the able leadership of Duncan Carse. That party was made up of expert climbers and was well equipped with everything needed for the journey. Even so, they found it treacherous going.

Then every man in that room stood up, and the four old skippers took Shackleton and Worsley and Crean by the hand and congratulated them on what they had done.

Many of the whalermen were bearded and dressed in heavy sweaters and sea boots. There was no formality, no speeches. They had no medals or decorations to bestow — only their heartfelt admiration for an accomplishment which perhaps only they would ever fully appreciate. And their sincerity lent to the scene a simple but profoundly moving solemnity. Of the honors that followed — and there were many — possibly none ever exceeded that night of May 22, 1916, when, in a dingy warehouse shack on South Georgia, with the smell of rotting whale carcasses in the air, the whalermen of the southern ocean stepped forward one by one and silently shook hands with Shackleton, Worsley, and Crean.