Monday, October 10, 2011

Crew of the Shackleton Expedition


"MEN WANTED: FOR HAZARDOUS JOURNEY. SMALL WAGES, BITTER COLD, LONG MONTHS OF COMPLETE DARKNESS, CONSTANT DANGER, SAFE RETURN DOUBTFUL. HONOUR AND RECOGNITION IN CASE OF SUCCESS. SIR ERNEST SHACKLETON"
In August of 1914, Ernest Shackleton led a crew of 55 other crazy-but-not-stupid people (they were adventurers, seamen, artists, geologists, meteorologists, physicists, biologists, surgeons) to be the first to cross the continent of Antarctica--on two ships called the Endurance (28 men) and the Aurora (28 men).  In December, they leave the South Georgia whaling station to enter Antarctic waters.  Only one month later, Endurance froze in the water, leaving its crew stranded in cold beyond imagination.  They would not touch land again for 497 days.  It would be 22 months before they were rescued.  Miraculously, all 28 men survived almost two years in the Antarctic without food or adequate clothing.

The Aurora crew was not so lucky.  Their job was to leave depots of food and supplies on the other side of the continent for the transcontinental trekkers.  They dropped off a shore party of 10 men (mostly scientists) who carted heavy cargo in -92ºF weather.  Most of the dogs had long died in the cold.  To add insult to injury, the Aurora broke free of its mooring and left its shore party stranded with only the supplies in their huts. Believing the other team's lives were in their hands, they continued on their mission, laying caches of whatever food and supplies they could cobble together at designated points--while subsisting on 8 lumps of sugar and half a biscuit a day themselves.  While fighting scurvy.  They would not be rescued until January 1917, 4 months and 10 days after the rescue of the Endurance crew.  Three men out of the 10 died during the two years they spent on Antarctica.

The attention is usually on the crew of the Endurance.  With no lives were lost, it somehow makes for a happier story.  The shore party of the Aurora is often forgotten, but in my eyes, they were more heroic.  They voluntarily starved and died to do their jobs against all odds and lay food depots for the Endurance crew that would never come.

No other entries will be posted this week, because these 38 extraordinary men should keep your jaw dropped for a while.

Here they are.  More details on the 28 of the Endurance crew are here.

NOVA:  Shackleton's Voyage of Endurance

Wikipedia

American Museum of Natural History on the Endurance

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