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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Nothing is so bad that it can't get worse, August 13, 2002
This book is one of the few exceptional -absolutely execptional- tales of survival and it proves the maxim that nothing is so bad that it can't get worse. But also it proves that you can know the end of a story - it is a well known fact that Shackleton brought all his men through this arduous trial and all survived - and it doesn't spoil the story at all. Truth is not only stranger than fiction, but it is a good deal harder. The bare-bones of the story are that Shackleton and his team left civillisation in 1914 in the Endurance to travel to attempt to reach the South Pole - a trip he had tried and failed by only a couple of hundred miles or so to achive in 1908. Amundsen had already reached the pole first but for Shackleton it was unfinished business. The Endurance had been built to push through the pack ice, but conditions proved too much and it was trapped in pack ice. Summer wore on and there was no escape - the winds were in the wrong direction - then winter hit and they were trapped in their boat. They settled in to a routine until the ice went against them and cracked the Endurance. Shackleton realised the only way out was on their own, so they abandoned the boat and made for the pack ice at first dragging the boats, then relying a floe to carry them north where they might find more supplies, or be rescued. In the end they had to rescue themselves and this is the story of their indomitable courage and strength to survive under incredibly harsh conditions and in grave discomfort. We are talking about camping out in antartica - in less than adequate shelter, with essentially starvation rations, no heating, barely adequate clothing. Lansing tells this story in a sparing style and it really works. He has had access to (I think) all the diaries available from men who kept them on the trip and they are very revealing of both personalities and foibles of the various characters who made up the trip - and these aren't all a bunch of saintly characters pulling together for the sake of their team and mutual survival - they fight, some are occassionally selfish, they love their dogs but have almost no compunction of putting them down when they have to - and they are very real and human. Lansing also brings to light some of the things you wouldn't think about it - the incredible boredom that they all felt, that they were generally alternatvely wracked by either gripping hunger or desparate need for survival and how to escape - the one emotion replacing the other depending on conditions. He also explains some of the things you wouldn't even think to ask - how they went to the toilet for instance, the conditions inside the huts and the tents and so on. It brings a very vivd picture of life as it must have been for the group. And really, nothing isn't so bad that it can't get worse. Each time you think that Shackleton is about to win there is a small disaster, or the elements go against them - they are constantly battling for their lives with decreasing odds of their survival. Even once they make it off the floe and onto land they have to move again to a safer landing place - and then they must work out how to get help. The nearest land is Chile some 500 miles away but it is almost impossible to get to because of wind and current, so they must try to South Georgia, over 800 miles away and a tiny speck of an island 25 miles across and they only thing in their way between Antartica and South Africa. Hardly an easy thing find in an open 22 foot boat. I know recently they tried to re-enact the voyage of Shackleton in his tiny boat - the James Caird - but without success as storms forced them to abandon the attempt. And that was a luxury trip compared to Shackleton's - the conditions on board were appalling - with stones for ballast - very little room and the ever present rotting reindeer hair from their sleeping bags. It is all credit to their navigator Frank Worsley that they reached South Georgia at all....but then they had had to land on the wrong side of the island due to conditions......but read the book - definitely read it..... This book would make a great adventure book to introduce Antarctic exploration for younger children or teenagers as it is so vivid and so exciting. They are chased by killer whales and leopard seals, they are constantly fighting the elements and they are if nothing else a very human group of people. This is one of the best books of survival I have ever read and is highly recommended.
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