Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage

All of them fell sullen—even Shackleton, who from the beginning had required of the men that they make every effort to remain cheerful in order to avoid antagonisms. But it seemed too much—to be so close, possibly only one good day’s run, and to have to stop. The strain on Shackleton was so great that he lost his temper over a trivial incident. A s

They looked up against the darkening sky and saw the fog curling over the edge of the ridges, perhaps 2,000 feet above them—and they felt that special kind of pride of a person who in a foolish moment accepts an impossible dare—then pulls it off to perfection.

They were all still crippled from the six days spent in cramped positions in the boats, and now for the first time they began to realize the incredible tension they had been under for so long. They became conscious of it, strangely, by a mounting awareness of a long-forgotten feeling. It was something they knew now they had not really experienced s

There was, on the whole, an astounding absence of serious antagonisms, considering the conditions under which they were attempting to exist. Possibly it was because they were in a state of almost perpetual minor friction. Arguments rambled on the whole day through, and they served to let off a great deal of steam which might otherwise have built up

These currents are affected only slightly by the wind, so that often a condition known to sailors as a “cross sea” is set up—when the wind is blowing in one direction, and the current moving in another. At such times, angry hunks of water—3, 6, 10 feet high—are heaved upwards, much as when breakers are thrown back from a bulkhead and collide with i

Through one means or another, they kept their spirits up—mostly by building dreams.

Then Greenstreet paused to get his breath, and in that instant his anger was spent and he suddenly fell silent. Everyone else in the tent became quiet, too, and looked at Greenstreet, shaggy-haired, bearded, and filthy with blubber soot, holding his empty mug in his hand and looking helplessly down into the snow that had thirstily soaked up his pre

The truth was that he felt rather out of his element. He had proved himself on land. He had demonstrated there beyond all doubt his ability to pit his matchless tenacity against the elements—and win. But the sea is a different sort of enemy. Unlike the land, where courage and the simple will to endure can often see a man through, the struggle again

For thirteen days they had suffered through almost ceaseless gales, then finally a huge rogue sea. They had been the underdog, fit only to endure the punishment inflicted on them. But sufficiently provoked, there is hardly a creature on God’s earth that ultimately won’t turn and attempt to fight, regardless of the odds. In an unspoken sense, that w