Welcome back to our series on the libraries of famous men.. Part of explorer Ernest Shackleton’s genius for leadership, was how keenly he understood the way in which idleness can destroy men’s morale.Thus when his ship, the Endurance, became stuck in pack ice en route to a planned Antarctic expedition, he didn’t let his men simply sit on their hands. Lansing describes Shackleton’s appearance in a vivid manner: He was now forty years old, of medium height and thick of neck, with broad, heavy shoulders a trifle stooped, and dark brown hair parted in the center. It threw freezing spray in their faces and tossed frigid water over them, and it batted the boats from side to side and brought brave men to the fetal position as they battled the elements and seasickness. He had a wide, sensuous but expressive mouth that could curl into a laugh or tighten into a thin fixed line with equal facility. Frank Hurley/Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge/Getty Images. In 1914, a ship called Endurance set sail from Argentina. Sir Ernest Shackleton, the intrepid explorer, is best remembered for embarking on a fateful voyage aboard the Endurance in a bid to cross the Antarctic. Shackleton’s plan—which owed a lot to an abandoned one penned by Scottish explorer, William Speirs Bruce—looked something like this: Shackleton’s plan was to take a ship [named Endurance] into the Weddell Sea and land a sledding party of six men and seventy dogs near Vahsel Bay, approximately 78° South, 36° West. South: The Endurance Expedition, by Ernest Shackleton. He was just 47. Of course, not everybody was impressed: in some circles, this undertaking was criticized not only as being too “audacious,” but also being kind of “impossible.” Perhaps it had been both. Alexander, Caroline, The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition (Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), Heacox, Kim, Shackleton: The Antarctic Challenge (National Geographic Society, 1999), Huntford,Roland, Shackleton (Hodder & Stoughton, 1985), Lansing, Alfred, Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage (Perseus Books, 1986), Shackleton, Ernest, South (Macmillan, 1920), Worsley, F.A., Shackleton’s Boat Journey (Hodder & Stoughton, 1940). Worsley had by that stage not slept for 80 hours. His charisma, ability to focus his team’s minds and lead them through a physically and emotionally difficult situation to safety, is what keeps people coming back for me. Ernest Shackleton and the Endurance . To stop this from happening and neutralize the depression as much as possible, Shackleton organized Sunday evening gramophone concerts and monthly lectures by the Endurance’s photographers, among many other jolly events that helped the sailors keep their spirits up. After disaster struck, it would be 497 days before they touched land again. WATCH: Full episodes of History's Greatest Mysteries online now and tune in for all-new episodes Saturdays at 9/8c. Unfortunately, just two days later it encountered the first ice pack on their journey. With Laurence Fishburne. Though some of them had scientific interests, the primary object of most of these expeditions was, interestingly, to become the first expedition to reach the geographic South Pole. From the Pole they would proceed to the vicinity of the mighty Beardmore Glacier where they would replenish their supplies at the southernmost depot laid down by the Ross Sea party. In a way, Shackleton used this to his benefit while soliciting funds for his Trans-Antarctic expedition, playing “heavily on this matter of prestige, making it his primary argument for such an expedition. There was no conceivable circumstance under which three strangers could possibly appear from nowhere at the whaling station, and certainly not from the direction of the mountains. In 1914, Sir Ernest Shackleton led an expedition to Antarctica but soon after arrival, Shackleton's ship--The Endurance--was destroyed by shifting glaciers, and he was tasked with leading his 27 men across the tundra, on an epic struggle for survival. Frank Worsley, Captain of the Endurance and navigator on the James Caird.Seen here on board the Endurance Sir Ernest Shackleton (1874-1922) was a British explorer most famous for his Endurance expedition to Antarctica (Larson, 2011). Though they had failed dismally even to come close to the expedition’s original objective, they knew now that somehow they had done much, much more than ever they set out to do. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. The first ship on which Shackleton set out ran dangerously low on fuel while trying to navigate the pack ice, and was forced to turn back to the Falkland Islands. and accommodate ourselves to a state of barbarism is wonderful. The men on the British expedition to Antarctica endured entrapment, hunger, … It was the first time they had been on dry land since leaving South Georgia 497 days previously. She was launched in 1912 from Sandefjord in Norway; three years later, she was crushed by pack ice and sank in the Weddell Sea off Antarctica. And by “beautifully written,” we mean “written in a way they don’t write books anymore”: Lansing’s prose belongs more to the 19th century than to the modern age, but that should be off-putting only to those who, unlike the protagonist of the book, are not persistent and tenacious enough to swim through the breathtaking layers of meaning and reach the surface both richer and more perceptive.A classic of exploration literature, Endurance is a story of heroic failure, and since heroic failure touches people even more than heroic success, it’s bound to remain engraved in your memory for quite some time. And old Norwegian whaler recoded the scene when the three men stood before the station manager Thoralf Sørlle: “Manager say: ‘Who the hell are you?’ And the terrible bearded man in the center of the three say very quietly: ‘My name is Shackleton.’ Me – I turn away and weep.”. After lengthy preparation, everyone is excited for the adventure. It was almost as if he had nothing to accomplish anymore. See why. But, very soon—in the middle of January 1915, to be exact—they happened upon another ice pack, some 200 miles from Vahsel Bay. Alfred Lansing was an American journalist and writer, best known for his 1957 classic, Endurance. Shackleton joined the merchant navy at an early age and become obsessed with reaching Antarc-tica after he was forced to return home due to an illness on his way to Antarctica. Endurance was beset—in the words of one of the crew, Thomas Orde-Lees, “frozen like an almond in the middle of a chocolate bar.”. All of her crew survived. The storms had pushed the James Caird off course, and they had landed on the other side of the island from the whaling station. And yet here they were: their hair and beards stringy and matted, their faces blackened with soot from blubber stoves and creased from nearly two years of stress and privation. Twenty-five days later, what remained of the wreck convulsed once more, and the Endurance disappeared beneath the ice forever. However, when Amundsen reached the Farthest South latitude (90°S) on December 15, 1911, Shackleton was a bit shackled. 12min Team | Posted on November 7, 2019 |. Learn more and more, in the speed that the world demands. By late October 1915, still frozen immobile in the enormous ice pack, Endurance drifted over 500 nautical miles to the north-east. We had seen God in His splendors, heard the text that Nature renders. Few men unaccustomed to it can fight off its effects all together, and it has driven some men mad.”. He was perhaps best known for his 1914–16 expedition, in which his ship, Endurance, was crushed by pack ice and the crew endured months of hardship before being rescued. To make matters even worse, the ice had thickened in the meantime and Endurance had to endure much more pressure from the surrounding pack. In 1914, explorer Ernest Shackleton and his team of 27 men set off to become the first people to cross Antarctica on foot. Shackleton—for reasons explained above—barely even took this into consideration. Eventually, they lost sight of land completely: in fact, due to the Weddell Sea current, they started circling back to South Georgia and they were further and further away not only from their target but also from any land whatsoever. The extremely dangerous journey lasts for two weeks. Endurance was the three-masted barquentine in which Sir Ernest Shackleton and a crew of 27 men and one cat sailed for the Antarctic on the 1914–1917 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. His companions grew increasingly dispirited and doubtful. From the moment Ernest Shackleton and his crew aboard the British expedition ship, HMS Endurance had become immobilized 10 months earlier, they had been preparing for this moment. On August 1, 1914, aboard the Endurance, Shackleton would set sail for Antarctica for the third time. Twenty months after setting out for the Antarctic, every one of the Endurance crew was alive and safe. The whole nation was saddened. The men on the British expedition to Antarctica endured entrapment, hunger, frigid weather, angry seas—and near madness. Now they had a new foe to contend with: the open ocean. While this was being done, the Weddell Sea group would be sledding toward the Pole, living on their own rations. The Ross Sea party was to set down a series of food caches from their base almost to the Pole. #BLACKFRIDAY 12min - Get your career back on track! . Boost your life and career with the best book summaries. Leadership in Crisis: Ernest Shackleton and the Epic Voyage of the Endurance Essay Example. His face was handsome, though it often wore a brooding expression—as if his thoughts were somewhere else—which gave him at times a kind of darkling look. “From the sentimental point of view,” he wrote once, “it is the last great Polar journey that can be made. In 1914, his ship, , Endurance The 28 men spent months drifting on ice floes and traversing the Southern Ocean in … Ernest Shackleton, Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who attempted to reach the South Pole. Learn more … South With Endurance The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition 1914 – 1917. During the months of May and June, using borrowed ships (Southern Sky, Instituto de Pesca No. For several weeks, the ship poked and prodded its way through leads in the ice, gingerly making its way south; but on January 18, a northerly gale pressed the pack hard against the land and pushed the floes tight against each other. The initial plan was to march across the ice toward land, but that was abandoned after the men managed just seven and a half miles in seven days. He had small hands, but his grip was strong and confident. In 1914, Ernest Shackleton led an expedition in an attempt to become the first to cross Antarctica on foot. FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. And so Shackleton, Worsley and Tom Crean set off to reach it by foot—climbing over mountains and sliding down glaciers, forging a path that no human being had ever forged before, until, after 36 hours of desperate hiking, they staggered into the station at Stromness. There now remains the largest and most striking of all journeys—the crossing of the Continent.”. “There was no alternative,” wrote Shackleton, “but to camp once more on the floe and to possess our souls with what patience we could till conditions should appear more favourable for a renewal of the attempt to escape.” Slowly and steadily, the ice drifted farther to the north; and, on April 7, 1916, the snow-capped peaks of Clarence and Elephant Islands came into view, flooding them with hope. Against the advice of experienced whalers whom he meets in South Georgia en route to his destination, Shackleton proceeds with his plan to cross the Weddell Sea. Their record for exploration “had been perhaps unparalleled among the nations of the earth,” and now they had to take “a humiliating second-best” to a much less-renowned country. He spoke softly and somewhat slowly in an indefinite baritone, with just the recollection of a brogue from his County Kildare birth. They eat penguins and seals, occasionally killing dogs as well, to conserve food. "Leadership in Crisis: Ernest Shackleton and the Epic Voyage of the Endurance." Harvard Business School Case 803-127, April 2003. Through it all, Captain Worsley navigated through the spray and the squalls, until after six days at sea, Clarence and Elephant Islands appeared just 30 miles ahead. It is only due to Shackleton’s ability to motivate his people that the crew hasn’t given up altogether at this point. The likelihood of anybody coming across them was vanishingly small, and so after nine days of recuperation and preparation, Shackleton, Worsley and four others set out in one of the lifeboats, the James Caird, to seek help from a whaling station on South Georgia, more than 800 miles away. Shackleton was bold and daring when approaching lords, kings, business men and physicians for sponsoring his voyage He was confident of his abilities as a leader Pictured to the right: Frank Worsley, Ernest Shackleton, and Tom Crean After the Voyage of the Endurance (1917) Where the Endurance went down is well known; the … Yet, after all that had gone before, this final task in many ways proved to be the most trying and time-consuming of all. However, in the decades that followed, things changed, and nowadays it is Scott whose heroism and leadership qualities are often questioned, while Shackleton’s name has become almost synonymous with the word “leadership.” Like this summary? Hoping that a new ice floe will drift them to safety, on December 29, Shackleton sets a new camp on another ice pack, and dubs him “The Patience Camp.”. He was sent home early due to bad health. On October 27, 1915, it finally succumbed: the ice started crushing the boat. In 1914 Sir Ernest Shackleton leads twenty-seven men on the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Whalers there reported something portentous: the conditions in the Weddell Sea were the worst they could remember. On September 3, 1916, the Yelcho reaches Punta Arenas, with all 28 members of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition aboard. The men were exhausted. Soon after, to the dismay of the crew, the ice floe begins to break, and Shackleton has to plan a trip to some kind of a nearby land—using nothing more than three lifeboats. From there a small party, including himself, would set out on the first crossing of the continent, ultimately arriving at the Ross Sea, south of New Zealand, where another group would be waiting for them, having laid depots of food and fuel along the way. A month later, on December 5, 1914, Endurance left South Georgia. And it’s not about merely reaching the South Pole, but about something even more daunting and unimaginable: crossing the entire continent from sea to sea, via the pole. Shackleton gave the order to break camp and launch the boats, and all at once, they were finally free of the ice that had alternately bedeviled and supported them. The men on the island were settling down to a lunch of boiled seal’s backbone when they spied the Yelcho just off the coast. Ernest Shackleton and the crew of the "Endurance" set sail for Antarctica in 1914. To history buffs and readers of exploration literature, this period is mostly known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. “Some of the party have quite given up hope of her coming.” Orde-Lees was clearly one of them. We had reached the naked soul of man. Written Case Study - Leadership in Crisis: Ernest Shackleton and the Epic Voyage of the Endurance This case study analyzes how a prominent English polar explorer and his team of 27 men survived an expedition to Antarctica that went dramatically and dangerously awry. Filed under: History & Biographies, Leadership. “Down into valleys, up to tossing heights, straining until her seams opened, swung our little boat.”. And while some were crippled by seasickness, others were wracked with dysentery. In August 1914, days before the outbreak of the First World War, the renowned explorer Ernest Shackleton and a crew of twenty-seven set sail for the South Atlantic in pursuit of the last unclaimed prize in the history of exploration: the first crossing on foot of the Antarctic continent. , there was nothing else to do but to establish a routine and wait out the winter,. To hear all about the last ernest shackleton endurance summary and went home was headed toward Antarctica cross! 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