Section One of Part One of Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage (ch. 1-3)

Dr. Alexander H. Macklin

Frank wild

The dramatic but factual story of the trans-Antarctic journey begins with a flashback in which the crew has been ordered to abandon ship. The Endurance, which is the name of the ship and the book, is trapped in the pack ice. The hull of the ship is being crushed, but two crew members named Macklin and Wild were asked to retrieve timber for firewood form the ship before she sinks. Lansing described the scene in his book with this statement: "The noise inside was indescribable. The half-empty compartment, like a giant sounding box, amplified every snapping bolt and splintering timber." This frightful scene is what the two crew members had to experience after the demoralizing moment of abandoning their ship. Luckily the two men survived, but all twenty-eight members of the crew were left stranded in the arctic under the leadership of an ambitious man named Ernest Shackleton. This order given by Shackleton to retrieve the timber showed his leadership in that he thought of the long term problems. The year was 1914. This time period was far too early for modern satellite communications and global positioning systems.  The crew was truly alone.

As I began reading this story, I began thinking of a movie called Shutter Island. The movie in short is about a U.S. marshal who must investigate a murder in an asylum. It relates to Shackleton and his crew because their plan quickly goes awry and the U.S. marshal is stranded on the island without any hope of communication to the outside world which seems to be the situation that Shackleton is in.