Endurance

I finished another good book today. It was called Endurance by Alfred Lansing.

The book chronicles a failed Trans-Antarctic expedition led by Sir Ernest Shackleton in the early 1900's. Twenty eight men set out on Dec. 5th 1914 to land on the Antarctic continent. The name of their ship was Endurance and the name foreshadowed the trials that were to follow. Shackleton's plan was to be the first person to cross the Antarctic continent and then meet up with another ship on the other side. However, on Jan. 15th 1915, the Endurance became stuck in pack ice and all progress was halted.

The crew stuck with their ship believing this to be only a temporary setback until the ice broke up. However, the ice held fast all through the Antarctic summer and on into winter. Eventually, in October 1915, the Endurance was finally crushed and sank by the pack ice leaving the crew adrift on the ice in the middle of the Antarctic ocean. The crew lived off seals and penguins for months, riding the drifting snow as far north as it would allow. In April of 1916 they were forced into 3 small lifeboats as the ice finally began to break up beneath them. Over 100 miles from the nearest land, they managed to survive for a week on the water. After finally making landfall on a lifeless Antarctic rock of an island, it had been 497 days since they last stood on land.

Finding land was only a partial victory as the nearest actual civilization was a whaling station on another island over 800 miles away. Soon Shackleton and 5 other men were forced to leave the rest of the crew and set out in a 20 foot lifeboat across some of the most treacherous waters on the planet. After weeks of rough sailing, the small group made it back to civilization after 17 months in the Antarctic wilderness.

This really was a pretty good read. It always amazes me what people can endure and accomplish when they have no choice but to do so. Although this was largely a story of people sitting around and waiting endlessly for the best moment to make their move, it was still rather entertaining and not as dry of a read as one might think. It was well written and a really good story of adventure and perseverance. It's probably a good book to tackle during the summer, because it made me cold just reading it!