Alfred Lansing tells the gut-wrenching, true story of Ernest Shackleton’s 1914 Antarctic expedition that spawned one of the greatest tales of human survival ever told.
Shackleton and a crew of 27 men sought to sail to Antarctica and become the first to cross the continent overland. Before they could even hit land, their majestic new ship, Endurance, became trapped and eventually crushed by ice. With no way to communicate and, being hundreds of miles from civilization, no hope of rescue, Shackleton led his men through freezing temperatures, hellacious seas, and menacing storms for nearly two years, perched on a resourceful mix of tiny rescue boats and erratic chunks of block ice.
Endurance is a remarkable story, and a how-to guide of servant leadership. Shackleton took full control, but always put the well-being of his men first, and expertly leveraged his understanding of psychology to keep morale high in the face of hopelessness.
I won’t spoil it any further–I breezed through the book in a couple of days because I could hardly put it down and I’ll bet you would too. Instead, I’ll choose my 10 favorite passages to paint a picture.
ENDURANCE IN 11 PASSAGES:
1. “Nevertheless, there was a remarkable absence of discouragement. All the men were in a state of dazed fatigue, and nobody paused to reflect on the terrible consequences of losing their ship. Nor were they upset by the fact that they were now camped on a piece of ice perhaps 6 feet thick. It was a haven compared with the nightmare labor and uncertainty of the last few days on the Endurance. It was quite enough to be alive–and they were merely doing what they had to do to stay that way.”
2. “In some ways they had come to know themselves better. In this lonely world of ice and emptiness, they had achieved at least a limited kind of contentment. They had been tested and found not wanting.”
3. “Shackleton was concerned. Of all their enemies–the cold, the ice, the sea–he feared none more than demoralization.”
4. “In fifteen minutes, Patience Camp was lost in the confusion of ice astern. But Patience Camp no longer mattered. That soot-blackened floe which had been their prison for nearly four months–whose every feature they knew so well, as convicts know each crevice of their cells; which they had come to despise, but whose preservation they had prayed for so often–belonged now to the past. They were in the boats…actually in the boats, and that was all that mattered. They thought neither of Patience Camp nor of an hour hence. There was only the present, and that meant row…get away…escape.”
5. “Shackleton searched their faces for an answer to the question that troubled him most: How much more could they take?”
6. “No matter what the odds, a man does not pin his last hope for survival on something and then expect that it will fail.”
7. “It gave Shackleton a feeling of uneasiness. He now faced an adversary so formidable that his own strength was nothing in comparison, and he did not enjoy being in a position where boldness and determination count for almost nothing, and in which victory is measured only in survival.”
8. “The wind was nearly dead astern, and the Caird labored forward like a protesting old woman being hurried along faster than she cared to go.”
9. “The southwesterly gale screamed on, showing not the slightest sign of fatigue. The watches of that night were like a tally sheet of infinity. Every individual minute had to be noted, then lived through and finally checked off. There was not even a crisis to relieve the tortured monotony.”
10. “It seemed now that everything–the wind, the current, and even the sea itself–were united in a single, determined purpose–once and for all to annihilate this tiny boat which thus far had defied all their efforts to destroy it.”
11. “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 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.”
HOW I’LL APPLY IT
Perspective. It’s a good thing to get a dose of every now and then when we find ourselves complaining about things that really aren’t worthy of complaint. When I feel inclined toward self-pity, I’ll aim to remind myself of Shackleton’s story, count my blessings, and carry on.