- Shackleton's Endurance, by Joanna Grochowicz. Allen & Unwin, $16.99.
If you were to evaluate Ernest Shackleton on the basis of his three expeditions to the Antarctic, he could be declared a failure. His rivals Scott and Amundsen were the heroes of what became known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. But that order changed towards the end of the century and in 2002, he was voted 11th in a poll of 100 Greatest Britons, one position ahead of Scott.
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This book is an account of the second of his trips to the South. His ship was called Endurance, but the book deals much more with the lowercase use of that word, standing for resoluteness, determination, grit, refusal to give in when all hope seems gone.
With two doctors, four scientists and 21 seamen, Endurance became trapped in pack ice in the Weddell Sea. For nine months, they lived on the ship before they had to abandon it and spend the next six months on shifting ice floes, during which time the Endurance sank. There followed a perilous week on leaky lifeboats before they landed on Elephant Island - isolated and frozen, but firm ground if you dug deep.
A week later, Shackleton and five of his men began another wobbly sea journey to an isolated spot on South Georgia; from there, three of them walked and slid over iced hills to reach Stromness, where they were cared for by Norwegian whalers. Now, the job was to pick up the three men they had left on the island and the 21 others on Elephant Island. It took four attempts on ships from South American ports before they were all finally rescued. Back in Britain in late 1917, more than two years after they left, with little to show for their efforts, many of the men immediately joined up as part of the war effort.
Reading this account of the expedition requires stamina. Not because it is poorly written, but rather the opposite. The author draws us in to the struggles and hardships, the minor squabbles and the attempts to pass the time.
We get to know some of the men too, the ever-reliable ones like the Irishman Tom Crean and the three Franks: Shackleton's deputy Frank Wild, Australian photographer Frank Hurley and the New Zealand captain of the Endurance, Frank Worsley. All had been to the Antarctic before, some more than once, and helped to keep what might easily have become a disorganised gang working together. But the hero is Shackleton. Once he realises that the Endurance will never make it back to Britain, his focus is keeping his men alive and ensuring that they all get home again.
A wonderful account of the ability of humans to withstand the worst that nature can throw at them: a book about endurance, lowercase.
