Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #270397 in Books
• Published on: 2001-03-30
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Amazon.com
Ernest Shackleton, an undeniably brave explorer, labored under a terrible ambition for nearly two decades: the desire to be the first man to reach the South Pole. Repeatedly thwarted by the elements, then finally beaten by the Norwegian adventurer Roald Amundsen, Shackleton revised his objective in 1912. He would be the first, he decided, to complete "the crossing of the South Polar Continent, from sea to sea."

Shackleton planned to take his ship, Endurance, to the Weddell Sea and from there set out on foot across the polar plateau; he and his party would be supplied at depots set out by another exploring party. Shackleton never arrived at those depots; Endurance was crushed by sea ice, its sailors marooned for months of endless winter. Unaware of Endurance's fate, the 10-man supply party set out on the other side of the continent and discharged their duties without complaint. In the process, three of them died after crossing hundreds of miles of unforgiving, storm-blasted ice.

"Their sacrifice," writes Lennard Bickel, "became a footnote in history and was forgotten, even though Shackleton himself summed up their long agony by saying that 'no more remarkable story of human endeavour has been revealed than the tale of that long march'." Bickel's thoughtful history gives these courageous explorers their due, and it provides a valuable addition to the library of Antarctic travel. --Gregory McNamee

From Publishers Weekly
Ernest Shackleton's 1915 attempt to cross the Antarctic continent and his dramatic 800-mile open boat journey to find help when his ship was crushed by pack ice in the Weddell Sea, have been thoroughly chronicled (e.g., by Shackleton himself in South and by Roland Huntford in Shackleton). But Shackleton's fame has overshadowed the efforts of men who risked, and even gave, their lives to help him attain it. Drawing on research and reporting, Bickel (Mawson's Will) tells of the small party that set out from the other side of Antarctica that year to lay invaluable food depots for the explorers who would never come. Marooned when their ship was ripped from its moorings by a fierce polar gale, the group had to haul hundreds of pounds of food for themselves and the six members of Shackleton's party across 2,000 miles of frozen wasteland without proper equipment or any idea if they would be rescued. Bickel draws on the men's personal diaries and on lengthy interviews recorded in the late 1970s with the only survivingmember of the group in order to infuse the book with staggering details of the party's fight with scurvy and subzero cold. The characters, ranging from the prudent Ernest Joyce to the group's impetuous one-eyed captain, Aeneas Mackintosh, are surprisingly well developed, and Bickel graphically paints their plight, describing "haggard, dirty men, faces black from weeks of hugging the blubber stove, beards matted, here and there the scars of recent frostbite, and their clothes reeking of the smelly fat of the seals that had saved their lives." Balanced, vivid and informative, Bickel's work ensures that the duress endured by these men will not soon be forgotten. (Feb.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The New York Times Book Review
...it is more than a tale of survival against the odds...it is about the triumph of the human spirit.

Customer Reviews

Gripping tale, but lousy maps
This would have been a five-star book, had the maps not been so poorly presented. Of the three maps printed in the book, none of them have a scale, which is the cardinal sin of cartography. Ten miles? A hundred miles? Beats me. Also, while the map of all of Antarctica understandably does not have a north arrow (when you're at the South Pole, every direction is north), one of the smaller maps has south as up while the third has north as up, which is needlessly confusing.

These quibbles aside, the story is fascinating and heartbreaking at the same time. Saying "never have so many done so much for so little" sounds cliched, but it's true. What a horrible exercise in futility, although of course at the time the men did not know their efforts were for naught. Overall, I highly recommend this book and just wish the maps could be corrected.

Heartbreaking and Inspiring
In all the other books I've read about Shackleton's adventures, there have been little more than passing references to the men entrusted with laying the provisions that would have sustained Shackleton's party for the second half of their intended journey across the ice. Completely cut off from the world, abandoned on the ice, those brave men struggled more than a year in horrific conditions to lay the depots that would have been the salvation of Shackleton's party. Daily, they weighed their lives against those of their comrades for whom they were preparing and the harshness of reality against the bond of their word.

With enough background and history to provide clear understanding of the parties and resources involved, the book offers a suprisingly detailed look into the lives and hearts of these valient men. I found their courage inspiring and their devotion to each other and their mission moving. Informative and touching, this book is a must read!

The heros about whom no movie has been made
Too many books and movies about Shackleton's ill-fated Endurance expidition end with Shackleton reaching South Georgia Island and returning to rescue his crew of Endurance. This book chronicles the story of the party who was to lay Shackleton's supply depots for his cross-Antarctic journey, a journey he never made. These men in many ways had an even harder task than Shackleton's party. They not only had responsibility for their own well-being, but (as far as they knew) Shackleton's as well. This book is a riviting account of their harrowing journey and what Shackleton found when he went back for THEM after rescuing his own crew. This book will make all other accounts of Shackleton's Endurance expidition seem incomplete.