Endurance by Alfred Lansing #
Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing. A friend gave me this book from a Little Free Library awhile ago and it accompanied me in many nights camping over the last year or so.Somehow, it seemed like a fitting companion in those contexts. I knew the broad outline of the story: Antarctic expedition gets stuck in ice, something something something, and miraculously everyone survives. The book, however, filled in that “something something something” with amazing detail, recovered from diaries of the adventurers, interviews, and the like. Although the enterprise itself—attempting to become the first party to cross Antarctica by land—has the colonial overtones typical of that era of European exploration and periods of the story involve the menIt was 27 people and, yes, all men. doing a lot of nothing due to weather and the like, the book was extremely gripping.
I found the book refreshing in that it sticks almost entirely to the time from the voyage setting off to contact with civilization that will ensure a rescue. We hear nothing of a heroes’ welcome back in England, but a lot about the exact equipment used in various segments, and all the factors that went into the many hard decisions made. It begins with the original boat becoming trapped in ice, then backtracks to tell a bit about the start of the expedition. The men spend an entire winter on board the trapped boat before it gets crushed by the ice and they abandon ship. They then live on ice floes for a long time, before being able to head to the water in three smaller boats they carried with them. It’s hard to imagine enduringHa! the levels of cold, wetness, discomfort, hunger, and desperation that they did through this period.
The story ends with one miraculous landfall on Elephant Island, followed by a smaller party crossing the Drake Passage in a 22ft open boat and landing on South Georgia. They complete the first crossing by land of that islandWith 50m rope and a carpenter’s adz as their ice axe between 3 people. and reach a Norwegian whaling station. The book ends with three “ghosts”, covered in soot, matted beards, and ragged clothes, coming into the station. When he says “My name’s Shackleton”—the second-to-last line of the book before the epilogue—the reader gasps the way the station leader must have as well.
Grade: A-