The Endurance: Shackletons Legendary Antarctic Expedition

Using all the knowledge he had gained from the discovery expedition, Shackleton obtained money for his own expedition to claim the South Pole and in 1907 purchased a boat he called the “Nimrod”. In August of 1907, Shackleton, three companions, a team of 10 Manchurian ponies, and 9 sled dogs began south. The men got to within 100 miles of the pole, surpassing Scotts mar

k by 360 miles when the decision was made to turn back while it was still possible. They traveled for thirty six hours with almost no rest only to find that their base camp had been abandoned. They were later found by the Nimrods search party and returned home heroes, and Shackleton was knighted. The next few years were spent paying off the nimrods debt by lecturing, and turning the nimrod into a museum.

Shackleton decided that the best thing to do would be to attempt to march towards land. After three days of marching in deep snow it was decided that they should stop and set up camp to wait for the ice to break. The plan was that once the ice broke they would be able to use their boats to get to Paulet Island where there would be vital supplies at a hut built in 1902. Frank Hurley the expedition’s photographer and Shackleton decided to go back to the ship to save some of the negatives of the photographs that had been taken. They chose 120 negatives to take with them and destroyed the other 400 to prevent Hurley from being tempted to go back and get them. As the men waited for the ice to break, Shackleton started ordering that dogs be shot to cut down on the number of mouths they had to feed. Before long they began to eat the final few dogs that they had shot because of a lack of penguin meat.

In conclusion I thought this was a very interesting book to read. It was very well written in that the words were very descriptive and provided a good visualization of exactly what was going on. You felt like you were there with the crew, experiencing what they were going through. The pictures presented within the book are actual pictures taken by Frank Hurley and in some cases adds a sense of irony to the book because the sights are breathtaking. You can clearly tell that there was a great deal of time put into this book to make it accurate, especially when it comes to specific citations from crew members diaries. On the other hand these entries were the one thing I didn’t like about the book, because in many instances it became a case of “overkill” on some events that happened. This book has definitely been a good experience to read and has given me a better understanding of how much sacrifice was actually involved in early exploration.

Since the men now had nothing to do and were stuck for the winter, they began to play football, and amuse themselves by playing with the dogs to prevent boredom. They also hunted for seals and penguins as both a source of food and a way to keep active. With the start of March came a terrible blizzard with a temperature of -8 degrees Fahrenheit. The blizzard was so intense that captain Worsley gave the orders for everyone to stay on board the ship. May brought with it the Antarctic winter and the sun would disappear for the next four months. The as the ice around the ship began to push together, it started to form pressure ridges that rose up in some places to fifteen feet in height. Also the ice that the Endurance was trapped in had to be chipped away by the men, in order to keep it from crushing the ship. In September a flow opened below the Endurance and it drove for one hundred yards before being stopped and once again frozen as it had been for the months before. On October 24 the Endurance had been caught between three pressu

Some topics in this essay:
Frank Worsley, South Georgia, South Pole, Elephant Island, South Poles, Frank Hurley, Island Shackleton, Shackleton Scott, Buenos Aires, Norwegians Scott, shackleton decided, south georgia, boat named, whaling station, ice ship, south pole, set camp, sled dogs, elephant island, set sail, island south georgia, shackleton decided attempt, robert falcon scott,