Ernest ShackletonRezensionen

As I am building the model of the Endurance, I must at least try to read this account of the entire expedition including the amazing survival story of the entire crew.

A beautifully illustrated and bound book with very many archive photographs and some beautiful watercolours all taken or done during the expedition. A very exciting account of the attempt to reach the South Pole and fascinating accounts of the science and landscape encountered plus the realities of daily life and how the expedition was planned

A most fascinating piece of history, written up by Ernest from the diaries, logs and journals that survived his calamitous attempt at crossing the Antarctic.   It seems that if it could have gone wrong, it did go wrong.

There's that all pervasive, Victorian attitude of bloody minded, arrogant perseverance throughout this book, and it certainly feels that that is all that kept these people alive, but it's also what got them into the mess in the first place.

Having been beaten to be the first to get to the South Pole by Roald Amundsen, Shackleton decided to turn his sights on being the first to cross the Antarctic.   It certainly seems to me that this need to be the first, to always be proving that the British could do something quicker and better than any other nation, caused Shackleton to rush into something he was completely unprepared for.   Whereas Amundsen, being Norwegian, was obviously very used to dealing with very cold temperatures, was fully trained with sled dogs and their uses, and set out fully trained and physically fit, Shackleton appears to have just taken the bloody minded, arrogant approach of... 'We're British and we know what we're doing and nothing, not even Nature, can stand in our way.   For King and Country, and all that!'

I just get the feeling that Shackleton's attitude was... 'Let's just get going, we can't afford to wait, we can sort it all out when we get there.'

While this book is, without a doubt, an incredible testament to the incredible bravery, fortitude and perseverance of humans to survive when pushed well beyond all imaginable limits, it's also a testament to some incredible stupidity.

Yes, i realise, that that was the zeitgeist: to just keep throwing people, lives and equipment at a problem until it was dealt with.   Human life was not held in such high regard back then as it is today.   Spending a few years properly planning and training was simply unacceptable when other nations would have no such restraint and do it before us.   So one does have to weigh this account in that regard, and when weighted in that light Shackleton did an incredible job, and it's always so easy to criticise with hindsight.   If the weather had been with him those years then what could have been achieved?

A well written autobiography that really makes you appreciate the challenges encountered and get a real feeling for what the team were going through day by team. It was quite tedious to read at times (actually, for large chunks) with how detailed the mundane descriptions of each day sometimes were but it did help to make you appreciate what they were going through.

Beautiful looking but severely abridged version of Shackleton's book. Nice to look at but go find a free unabridged e-book edition to actually read (its in the public domain).

Great story told in the dullest possible manner. Shackleton manages to take all the excitement out of an astounding story of survival and suffering. Compare to [a:Apsley Cherry-Garrard|27180|Apsley Cherry-Garrard|http://www.goodreads.com/assets/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66-251a730d696018971ef4a443cdeaae05.jpg]'s [b:The Worst Journey in the World|48503|The Worst Journey in the World|Apsley Cherry-Garrard|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1349013386s/48503.jpg|47447] where a similar story of Scott's Last Antarctic Expedition manages to capture all of the extraordinary experience, risk, pain, and death involved in early 20th Century polar exploration.

Coming into this book, I'd decided I wanted to read a "happier" tale of polar expeditions - no human died on the Endurance side of this trip. At the end of this book, I learned once again that it was blind luck that nobody died.

Shackleton was unbelievably lucky that the Endurance sank as slowly as it did, considering all the trips back that the crew was able to make to get flour and other necessities. I don't know whether they should have tried harder to sledge across the ice floes - after George Washington De Long's inhuman attempt to get off the ice pack near the North Pole, Shackleton's attempts seem pretty wimpy.

This also included so much animal death, retold in some really eerily creepy ways. The explorers all loved the penguins, but loved dissecting their stomachs and eating them more (it is a starvation scenario so the unashamed eating is definitely understandable, but the gleeful way Shackleton described catching the penguins was pretty haunting).

I dunno. Seeing how hard it was for them to get off the continent, and then how hard it was to get ships to Elephant Island to rescue the rest, I can understand why nobody was in a hurry to throw money at the endeavor. It put a lot of things into perspective.

Something about these polar expeditions fascinate me. Why groups of men thought it would be a good idea to sail in a wooden ship to Antarctica and then walk across the continent dragging their food and supplies behind them, wearing reindeer skins and canvas, I will never understand. They are so cheerful about it, too. Poor Smith, he died of painful scurvy in a tent during a blizzard, but he smiled and joked until the end. What a great guy! I don't deny that these feats were amazing and inspiring, I just wonder how bad regular life in England was to make these journeys seem like any kind of alternative.

A beautifully produced set from the Folio Society, comprising two volumes of The Heart Of The Antarctic and the single volume of South, with an envelope of maps and panoramas, housed in a high quality slipcase.

This book is an opportunity to gain a massive increase in your vocabulary of terms relating to seamanship and antarctic exploration.

Escape from the Antarctic is a selection from Ernest Shackleton's book South, describing the most remarkable part of Shackleton's disastrous expedition to the Antarctic in 1914-17. Escape tells the portion of the story where Shackleton and his men have been marooned with few supplies on an Antarctic island after their ship is crushed by pack ice, and his decision to set out across 800 miles of forbidding ocean – "the most tempestuous storm-swept area of water in the world" (pg. 3) – in a small boat with a handful of men to the tiny island of South Georgia. On this island, the exhausted men then traverse a glacier thought impassable to find aid at a whaling station.

It is an incredible feat, and for the most part Shackleton's prose matches it. It is quite a dry account, with only the occasional flair, but the feats described are remarkable no matter how they are told. It is impossible when reading not to be intimidated by the cold, terror and brute force of Antarctic nature, and impossible not to be staggered by the ability of weak, exhausted men to resist it. Anyone who can tell first-hand of crashing ice, howling hurricanes and gigantic waves – "so small was our boat and so great were the seas that often our sail flapped idly in the calm between the crests of two waves" (pg. 15) – is always going to find ears for his story.

His destination Antarctica, his expectations high, veteran explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton set out, on the eve of the First World War, in pursuit of his goal to lead the first expedition across the last unknown continent. Instead, his ship, the Endurance, became locked in sea ice, and for nine months Shackleton fought a losing battle with the elements before the drifting ship was crushed and his crew marooned.

Shackleton's gripping account of his incredible voyage follows him and his men across 600 miles of unstable ice floes to a barren rock called Elephant Island. It records how, with a crew of four, he crossed 850 miles of the worst seas in a 22-foot-long open boat and how, after landing on South Georgia Island, they then had to traverse over 20 miles of mountainous terrain to reach the nearest outpost of civilization. Shackleton recounts, too, the efforts of his support party aboard the Aurora, who in temperatures of -50 degrees and winds of 80 m.p.h. still managed to drop off supplies on the opposite side of the continent, little suspecting the fate of the Endurance and the ordeal of its crew.

An astonishing story that explores the limits of unparalleled human courage, Shackleton's South ranks among history's greatest adventures.

I doubt there could be a more real life example of the ‘What would you take to a desert island?’ than Shackleton’s trip to the Antarctic. There is an exhibition of the photographs of that trip on at the RGS in London at the moment. One of the photos shows a wall of books, his floating library. The RGS has been able to digitally enhance it, so that we now know exactly what Shackleton took on this unhappy expedition.

Can you judge a book by its cover?


Magazine correctly judged by cover (from The Onion)

The fact is that one often can. And taking that notion a little further, surely we can judge a man by the covers of his books. That’s something, with the advent of electronic book reading, that we will never be able to do again. It is so easy and cheap to download that one can never make assumptions about the relationship of the book to the machine owner. Here, however, of course we are entitled to draw conclusions. The man bothered to take the books to Antarctica. The books mean something.

I’ve arranged the list in order into:

literature
linguistic and general reference
exploration

Between the general reference section and the exploration books I’ve squeezed in two non-fiction books, one by the socialist JB Askew and one by Alfred Dreyfuss.

As for literature, it is interesting to note that it is relatively light on our notion of classics. Most of them are the best sellers or maybe, to convert to our idiom, the Goodreads trending books of his time. There are quite a few murder mysteries or similar.

I’m guessing that those reading this have never heard of:

Gertrude Atherton
Amelie Rives
Montague Glass
Ian Hey
AEW Mason
David Bone
Herbert Flowerdew
John Joy Bell
Louis Tracy
William J Locke
Rex Beach
Robert Hugh Benson
H De Vere Stacpoole

Yet Atherton was compared with Wharton, Rives was the EL James of her day, and William J Locke made the best selling US novels list in five different years. His stories were made into films 24 times, including Ladies in Lavender starring Dench and Maggie Smith in 2004 and four of his books made Broadway as plays. In fact, although not one of my 500 goodreads friends has reviewed any of these authors, Locke is still well read and loved, judging by the reviews. I confess I did not know his name.

Potash and Perlmutter, the comic rag trade merchants of Monatague Glass, were all the rage amongst New York Jews. Stacpoole is the author of The Blue Lagoon of the film fame (some would say infamy) and Flowerdew used his novels to proselytise on the rights of women:

rest here:

https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpress.com/2016/02/26/the-desert-island-aka-sha...

I doubt there could be a more real life example of the ‘What would you take to a desert island?’ than Shackleton’s trip to the Antarctic. There is an exhibition of the photographs of that trip on at the RGS in London at the moment. One of the photos shows a wall of books, his floating library. The RGS has been able to digitally enhance it, so that we now know exactly what Shackleton took on this unhappy expedition.

Can you judge a book by its cover?


Magazine correctly judged by cover (from The Onion)

The fact is that one often can. And taking that notion a little further, surely we can judge a man by the covers of his books. That’s something, with the advent of electronic book reading, that we will never be able to do again. It is so easy and cheap to download that one can never make assumptions about the relationship of the book to the machine owner. Here, however, of course we are entitled to draw conclusions. The man bothered to take the books to Antarctica. The books mean something.

I’ve arranged the list in order into:

literature
linguistic and general reference
exploration

Between the general reference section and the exploration books I’ve squeezed in two non-fiction books, one by the socialist JB Askew and one by Alfred Dreyfuss.

As for literature, it is interesting to note that it is relatively light on our notion of classics. Most of them are the best sellers or maybe, to convert to our idiom, the Goodreads trending books of his time. There are quite a few murder mysteries or similar.

I’m guessing that those reading this have never heard of:

Gertrude Atherton
Amelie Rives
Montague Glass
Ian Hey
AEW Mason
David Bone
Herbert Flowerdew
John Joy Bell
Louis Tracy
William J Locke
Rex Beach
Robert Hugh Benson
H De Vere Stacpoole

Yet Atherton was compared with Wharton, Rives was the EL James of her day, and William J Locke made the best selling US novels list in five different years. His stories were made into films 24 times, including Ladies in Lavender starring Dench and Maggie Smith in 2004 and four of his books made Broadway as plays. In fact, although not one of my 500 goodreads friends has reviewed any of these authors, Locke is still well read and loved, judging by the reviews. I confess I did not know his name.

Potash and Perlmutter, the comic rag trade merchants of Monatague Glass, were all the rage amongst New York Jews. Stacpoole is the author of The Blue Lagoon of the film fame (some would say infamy) and Flowerdew used his novels to proselytise on the rights of women:

rest here:

https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpress.com/2016/02/26/the-desert-island-aka-sha...

I doubt there could be a more real life example of the ‘What would you take to a desert island?’ than Shackleton’s trip to the Antarctic. There is an exhibition of the photographs of that trip on at the RGS in London at the moment. One of the photos shows a wall of books, his floating library. The RGS has been able to digitally enhance it, so that we now know exactly what Shackleton took on this unhappy expedition.

Can you judge a book by its cover?


Magazine correctly judged by cover (from The Onion)

The fact is that one often can. And taking that notion a little further, surely we can judge a man by the covers of his books. That’s something, with the advent of electronic book reading, that we will never be able to do again. It is so easy and cheap to download that one can never make assumptions about the relationship of the book to the machine owner. Here, however, of course we are entitled to draw conclusions. The man bothered to take the books to Antarctica. The books mean something.

I’ve arranged the list in order into:

literature
linguistic and general reference
exploration

Between the general reference section and the exploration books I’ve squeezed in two non-fiction books, one by the socialist JB Askew and one by Alfred Dreyfuss.

As for literature, it is interesting to note that it is relatively light on our notion of classics. Most of them are the best sellers or maybe, to convert to our idiom, the Goodreads trending books of his time. There are quite a few murder mysteries or similar.

I’m guessing that those reading this have never heard of:

Gertrude Atherton
Amelie Rives
Montague Glass
Ian Hey
AEW Mason
David Bone
Herbert Flowerdew
John Joy Bell
Louis Tracy
William J Locke
Rex Beach
Robert Hugh Benson
H De Vere Stacpoole

Yet Atherton was compared with Wharton, Rives was the EL James of her day, and William J Locke made the best selling US novels list in five different years. His stories were made into films 24 times, including Ladies in Lavender starring Dench and Maggie Smith in 2004 and four of his books made Broadway as plays. In fact, although not one of my 500 goodreads friends has reviewed any of these authors, Locke is still well read and loved, judging by the reviews. I confess I did not know his name.

Potash and Perlmutter, the comic rag trade merchants of Monatague Glass, were all the rage amongst New York Jews. Stacpoole is the author of The Blue Lagoon of the film fame (some would say infamy) and Flowerdew used his novels to proselytise on the rights of women:

rest here:

https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpress.com/2016/02/26/the-desert-island-aka-sha...

Sometimes when you read these 'mini' books (this one 88p), they're too short to make much of an impact.
This is such an absolutely outstanding account of human doggedness and strengt of character that it will remain with you forever.
Stuck in an Antarctic camp, with winter approaching, low rations and some men unable to continue, Shackleton and his five best men, leave the other twenty-two and go to seek help. Braving an 800 mile voyage, in a very primitive boat across the gale-tossed Southern Ocean, (endless baling; minimal food; shifts on duty relieved by a rest in a cold wet sleeping bag); they finally reach South Georgia and the whaling stations.
It then requires a superhuman journney through uncharted land....glaciers, crevasses, waterfalls.Their initial 'reasonably comfortable' billet in a cave has 15 foot icicles in dooway.. Leaving three of the six at the camp, Shackleton, Worsley and Crean set out for the final stage to find help...the most moving passage is their first intimation that they'd done it:
"At 630 am, I thought I heard the sound of a steam whistle. I dared not be certain, but I knew that the men at the whaling station would be called from their beds about that time. Descending to the camp I told the others and in intense excitement we watched the chronometer for seven o'clock, when the whalers would be summoned to work.Right to the minute the steam whistle came to us, borne clearly on the wing across the intervening miles of rock and snow.....It was the first sound created by outside human agency that had come to our ears since we left Stromness Bay in December 1914."
But there are still more hazardous miles to cross, always thinking of the two abandoned groups of comrades waiting on them. And even on arrival, there is still much to go wrong as successive boats have to be summoned from various local countries, but fail, repeatedly to reach the first group due to encroaching pack ice...
Completely unputdownable. The reader will never forget the utter grimness of their experience:
"Supper consisting of a pannikin of hot milk, one of our precious biscuits and a cold penguin leg each."
"The chafing of our legs by our wet clothes, which had not been changed now for seven months."
"The soup , which was particularly good that day, consisting of boiuled seal's backbone, limpets and seaweed."

This classic needs little introduction, being among the top three most famous accounts of the golden age of polar exploration (the other two Worst Journey and Scott's journals). Unlike most books about polar misadventures this has a happy ending and remains optimistic throughout. I am impressed by the clarity of the writing, Shackleton is not a poet but has an eye for detail and respect for the reader. It has a symmetry mirroring the circular route. I listened to the audiobook performance by Rupert Degas. A remarkable interpretation where the sum is greater than the parts. There are still actors around able to perform in-period so we can hear the words as they were meant to spoken, not unlike the skills of a Shakespearean actor. Hurrah.

Although already familiar with the story from Lansing's "Endurance," I still found Shackleton's recounting worthwhile. It is a little slow at the beginning, and quite slow at the end when he describes the travails of the support expedition on the other side of Antarctica. But there is some surprisingly good writing, lots of adventure in an amazing place, insights on leadership.

> Three emperor penguins made their appearance in a lead west of the ship on May 3. They pushed their heads through the young ice while two of the men were standing by the lead. The men imitated the emperor's call and walked slowly, penguin fashion, away from the lead. The birds in succession made a magnificent leap 3 ft. clear from the water on to the young ice. Thence they tobogganed to the bank and followed the men away from the lead.

A fascinating account.

A tale where I kept going, "What?!" Amazing fortitude exhibited by all, though hints of cracking here and there.

A thing which struck me while reading was when Shackleton referred to people by name and when he did not. By his account, the carpenter was probably one of the most essential team members but is rarely referred to by name, just "the carpenter." Other British classisms appear here and there.

The appendix on whaling counts was horrifying, the collapse of the humpback population being captured in real time. The other appendix sections give master lessons on how to write up results from failed experiments.½

As always, a great book and a great story.M cop is the U.S. first.

Volume 1, by E.S. was excellent. Volume 2, primarily by professor David and Mawson, was not even close in quality. Twas still quite interesting, though nowhere near the stuff of "South". My copy is the 2 volume first edition produced in 1909.

What a fantastic adventure story. Shakelton left no man behind.

So-so....introduction was interesting as was "The Ascent of Mt. Erebus" and "An Ancient Manuscript", but the rest was rather droll....

Amazing story of leadership, determination, duty and ability.½