Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing
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Book Reviews of Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage
Book Review: Enduring the Endurance
Summary: 5 Stars
Due to the braveness shown by the men throughout this book, and it being a true story I gave this book a 5 because it couldn't have been written in any other way. It shows the hardships the men had to face. The details about the men's desparity to live and how they had to kill their own pack of dogs were gruesome, but show the hardships the men had to face. Alfred Lansing made the moment by moment details make the book come to life along with the seemingly doomed men. His own personal hands-on research on the ship and the voyage make it a very honest story to believe. The wind, the dampness, the bitter cold and the long months of darkness in the winter seem like more than any man should be able to stand. They slept in wet sleeping bags in sub-freezing temperature; ate unappetizing foods; and still managed to keep their hopes alive. It is only the resourcefulness of Sir Ernest and the hand of God that allows these men to avoid a certain death. These are men who went to Hell and came back alive. At the end of the book all 28 men who started on the voyage survive. This is one of those books that truly puts life into perspective. What these men went through--had to go through--simply for survival is utterly amazing and inspirational. I could not imagine any more desolate and hopeless conditions. The book speaks a lot for the endurance of the human spirit, its willingness and strength to continue on at all odds as long as a shred of hope still remains. Having the photographs from the voyage included in Alexander's book adds an important extra advantage point to the story. This is a must-read book about leadership and courage in almost incomprehensible circumstances. I have NEVER stayed up all night reading a book and admit I read for extra points in English class, but once I started, I couldn't put this one down. I was exhausted the next day from lack of sleep, but enjoyed the journey.Book Review: Amazing Adventure
Summary: 5 Stars
It's been so cold outstide. Yesterday morning when I left the house at ten it was 1 degree outside. There is a crusty snow covering everything and that biting chill in the air. So, of course, it's the perfect weather to read about Shackleton's Incredible Voyage to Antartica and simultaneously feel grateful for my warm home and cozy bed.
My friend Jen gave me a copy of Endurance : Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing for Christmas. Obviously, my friends know me. When there are true stories this amazing, who needs fiction?
Sir Ernest Shackleton and his team of explorers planned and hoped to cross Antarctica. They set off on their ship from the island of South Georgia on December 5, 1914 and by January their ship was stuck fast in the ice of Weddell Sea. The men weathered the coming winter on their ship until it was crushed by the ice and had to be abandoned that October. Their survival is truly super human and simply amazing.
I was most impressed by the general morale of the group of men, their continual respect for their leader and the willingness to follow his lead in this long period of miserable conditions and peril.
I watched a movie with Utah Dad last night and it was late before I got to bed but I felt it absolutely necessary to finish this book before I could sleep. I just had to get those poor men rescued and safe. With little help from Mother Nature, who seemed most determined to destroy this band of explorers, the men were finally saved on August 30, 1916. That is a long time to be constantly cold, wet and hungry.
Lansing had access to the diaries of the men and frequently interviewed one of the survivors (the book was written in 1959) so that he could write this accurate and exciting account of this most incredible adventure.
Book Review: Wet Sleeping Bags
Summary: 5 Stars
Like almost every other reviewer here, I regard Shackleton's odyssey has one of the most incredible tales of human endurance...ever. His men...survive months of exposure to the Antarctic cold, on the floating, shifting ice pack...and nobody dies. If it weren't thoroughly documented it would be an unbelievable tale. As it is, it is a tale both remarkable and wonderful and is a testament of Shackleton's leadership and the grit of a remarkable crew.
Still for me, there was one thing that it is difficult to regard as literally possible...wet sleeping bags. If I can remember rightly the author states that most of the men's sleeping bags...bed rolls...were wet during most of the ordeal. I just don't believe this. I was stranded in Alaska in conditions far less horrific than the one's encountered by Shackleton's expedition. Nevertheless, the thing I feared the most was getting my sleeping bag soaked [it rained most of the time]. I truly believe that...although the temperatures were in the 30's and 40's...that I could not have survived 2 nights in a wet bag. All the sleeping bag's insulative properties would be lost and there would be nothing to protect me from the cold.
In the case of Shackleton's men, their sleeping equipment was reported as uniformly wet from their dousings in the frigid sea. Yes, given the extreme low temperatures, these bags would have frozen right up and it would have been possible to knock some of the ice from the surfaces of the bags but internal ice would have stayed and thawed on contact with warm human bodies. The crew would indeed have 'slept wet'...for months. It's scarcely credible unless their's something I'm unaware of...
Ron Braithwaite, author of novels--'Skull Rack' and 'Hummingbird God'--on the Spanish Conquest of Mexico
Book Review: Not to be missed
Summary: 5 Stars
I don't normally read thrillers, or adventure stories, but this recounting of the Shackleton ruin and recovery in the Antarctic is not to be missed. It manages to be both a heart stopping page turner, and a reasonably legitimate history. This is the book I passed around to my friends and family. Shackleton is a dreamer, publicity seeker and adventurer who planned to explore the Anarctic for less than entirely noble reasons at about the same time WWI was taking over the front pages of the world. Instead, he and his crew have to watch their beautiful ship be crushed by the ice. (The photographs are stunning.) The most dramatic description is a miracle of navigation of a long boat by the stars to get through the coldest and most storm toss'd ocean in the world to try to find a rescue. You'll read it through once fast, nearly as seasick and sore as the crew, and then have to read it through again to see if you really read it right the first time. The crew is a blend of the gentleman explorer of the (last) turn of the century along with the more rough and less educated crew that in combination manage to maintain the discipline and comradeship that is the basis of survival. Lansing gives high marks to Shackleton's leadership, as the crew is forced to abandon generous ships' stores, supplies that become 'luxuries' and even the sled dogs. The later Carolyn Alexander book has more of the fabulous pictures taken the ship's photographer, but the text is comparatively tepid compared to this version of the tale. I could have wished for more detail and rounding out of the personalities of the stranded men (including more 'backstory' and epilogue) but these are small complaints when compared to the tale itself. You will enjoy this book!Book Review: Man's Greatest Story of Survival and Rescue
Summary: 5 Stars
Back when there were 109 reviews and I contemplated adding one, I asked myself "Why would someone add the 110th review for a book that already had 109?" Now that there are 302, and I'm finally getting around to adding one, the answer is the same as it was then: because the story is that compelling. I'll leave it to others to fill in the details of Shackleton's 5 ordeals: months on the Antarctic ice in fabric tents; 100 miles in the frigid seas in 3 open rowboats; crossing 800 miles of the Drake passage---the only area of the globe where the lines of longitude are uninterrupted by landmass---in a 22-foot lifeboat with a meager sail... surviving not only 60-foot swells called the "Cape Horn Rollers" but a hurricane that claimed a 500-ton steamer; traversing 12 miles of the uncharted 6,000-foot glacier mountains of South Georgia island with only a pick, 50-feet of rope, and nails in their soles; and finally persisting 4 months through 4 attempts to rescue their comrades.
Here's my contribution. Where others have equivocated, let me clarify for you, this is Man's greatest story of survival and rescue. And Lansing's novelized account is the one that captures the story in its full drama and will etch it indelibly into one's mind.
I recently sent a copy of the new, pictorialized edition---my first reading was of a text-only 1959 library copy---to a friend and apologized that the pictures might make it hard to let the imagination do its full work. I encourage you to enjoy the unadorned story, as a novel, first if you can. If like me, you are of a mind to value resourcefulness and indefatigability, then you too will probably find yourself under Shackleton's spell for your remaining days. Enjoy.