Review: Shackleton’s Endurance: An Antarctic Adventure
Adrift on the Antarctic pack ice with no means of escape and no hope of rescue, Ernest Shackleton and his men are surely doomed but their remarkable story is a terrifying adventure with the happiest of endings which deserves to be remembered.
Who is this book for? That’s what I wondered as Miss 11 and I started Shackleton’s Endurance.
In August 1914, Shackleton and 27 sailors, scientists and a stowaway set sail for Antarctica to make the first land crossing of the icy continent. Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen had become the first to reach the South Pole in 1911; Shackleton’s rival Captain Robert Falcon Scott died trying in 1912.
Joanna Grochowicz has written about Amundsen and Scott so Shackleton’s Endurance can be seen as the third in a kind of trilogy. It means Grochowicz knows her stuff and is adept at weaving historical fact into an engaging story; it also means you’ll find yourself looking up more details of Amundsen and Scott and their respective expeditions but don’t let that put you off.
Seeking a new challenge, Shackleton believed it would take around 120 days – one short Antarctic summer – to complete the “last great polar journey” but how wrong he was. Grochowicz foreshadows this right from the start: “The Imperial Trans-Antarctic expedition is a shambles. The ship has a leak, there’s no coal for the boilers nor a cook for the galley; vital supplies are missing, and they’re four sailors short.”
Snappy sentences capture the grit and grim authenticity of the “heroic” age of exploration and those involved. The portrayals of historical figures, including New Zealand’s own Frank Worsley, are equally realistic alluding to less heroic traits demonstrated by some (although surely, given what they faced, it’s understandable).
Grochowicz breaks up the linear telling by including shorter chapters from Shackleton’s life which explain how, and why, he found himself leading the expedition. Dipping in and out of the story is a nice touch and avoids bogging it down in expository details. Photographs, taken by official expedition snapper Frank Hurley, are also well used; you’ll feel cold just looking at them.
In January 1915, Shackleton’s ship, the aptly named Endurance, became locked in pack ice which steadily crushed the life out of her. The men abandoned ship in October; in November, they watched – from an ice floe prone to cracking - her sink without trace along with any hope, however futile, of somehow sailing home aboard the three-masted barquentine.
They attempted a 500-kilometre land crossing but after four days and only 2kms, that was aborted to establish Patience Camp before, three months later, a perilous week-long sea journey, in wooden lifeboats, to the equally bleak ice-covered Elephant Island. A fortnight on, Shackleton took five men to sail across the Southern Ocean for South Georgia where they might sound the alarm and get their comrades rescued. He might not have made the first trans-Antarctic crossing but was the first to traverse South Georgia.
“For scientific discovery give me Scott; for speed and efficiency of travel give me Amundsen; but when disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton.” Attributed to Sir Raymond Priestly, Antarctic explorer and geologist.
But Shackleton couldn’t have picked a worse time to arrive. World War I broke out less than a month before the Endurance left Britain and by 1916, when he stumbled stinking and exhausted into the Stromness whaling station with second officer Tom Crean and skipper Worsley, no one back in Blighty was in any mood to spend money rescuing sailors stranded at the bottom of the world.
Shackleton didn’t quit. On the fourth attempt and four months later, he succeeded in rescuing the remaining 22 men stranded on Elephant Island. That they all survived speaks volumes about the hardiness of our forebears, perhaps something lost today.
If ever there’s a story about the power of resilience, it’s this one but like other tales of Polar exploration it risks being forgotten as the world moves on. What about those moon landings and missions to Mars, eh? That’s why I wondered who the book was for. Would this fine slice of narrative nonfiction, with its patient telling of survival against all odds, be enough to hold the imagination and attention of older children and young adults used to a far faster and higher tech world?
Even without the gadgets and gizmos, sketch drawings, larger-than-life characters and potty humour found in many books aimed at young chapter book readers, Miss 11 reveled in this story. She read chapters animatedly and expressively; she got me to repeat numerous passages from the ones I was reading including the final section which she wanted to hear again and again (and again) of how the Elephant Islanders first saw Shackleton had returned to save them.
“Imagine how good that must have felt,” she mused, eyes wide and smile even broader.
She’d originally wondered why you would bother telling a story about a man, and his team, who set out to do one thing but failed so spectacularly. By the end, though, she was in no doubt as to why Shackleton and the Imperial Trans-Antarctic expedition earned its place in history. She deemed it to be: “a story of great resilience and determination which shows how, when humans are put to the test, we can conquer any mountain, continent, planet and ocean (and could we start working harder on climate change?).”
“This book is an amazing and detailed re-telling of a miraculous journey that should not be forgotten.” I agree with her – and about those moon landings and missions to Mars? They’re still dealing with similar issues that explorers like Shackleton faced: how to feed a crew for months on end, where to find the money, how to mount a rescue mission if needed.
Reviewed by Dionne Christian and Zoe Gadd
