The Legend Of Ernest Shackleton And His Insane Rescue Mission
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Summary
In 1915, Ernest Shackleton and 27 of his crew were stranded in the frozen wastes of Antarctica. They had no food, no shelter, and no way to survive in the subzero temperatures and subzero conditions. The only saving grace for Shackleton was that, at least at first, there was no food.
Transcript
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In January of 1915, Ernest Shackleton, the captain of the ship Endurance, was trapped in the ice along with his vessel and 27 crew members about 85 miles from his intended landing point in Antarctica.
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It was what passes for summer in that part of the world, which meant temperatures hovered around negative two degrees Fahrenheit.
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Within a few short months, winter would settle in fully, temperatures dropping toward negative 30 and the sun disappearing entirely for weeks at a time.
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During the blizzards that swept across the region, wind chills could fall to extreme levels thanks to sustained winds of 60 to 70 miles an hour.
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In those conditions, exposed skin freezes within a matter of seconds.
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Severe hypothermia follows soon after, then unconsciousness, then death.
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The 28 men of the Endurance were then trapped in one of the most inhospitable environments on Earth.
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The conditions were already severe, and they were only going to get worse, much worse.
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But the situation was even more dangerous than that.
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A ship trapped in Antarctic pack ice is not like a car buried in snow on your driveway.
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The vessel was not resting on something stable or fixed.
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The ice itself is a shifting, grinding, violent mass of enormous slabs constantly in motion,
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compressing and colliding with whatever lay between them.
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When the wind rose, the ice would buckle into pressure ridges,
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towering walls of frozen blocks of ice that could rise 15 feet or more.
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Slow-moving, but immensely powerful, like icy battering rams.
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Shackleton could attempt to remain aboard the Adorants
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and wait for the ice to release them when it melts,
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but he also understood that there was no guarantee it ever would.
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It might be weeks, it might be months, it might even be years.
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In 1829, for example, the British explorer John Ross became trapped in the Arctic ice
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and remained frozen in place for four entire years before finally breaking free.
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In 1845, another British expedition under the famous John Franklin set out in search of the Northwest Passage
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and became trapped in Arctic ice aboard his ships, the Erebus, in terror.
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Franklin and several of his men died in the stranded ships, waiting for the ice to melt, which it never did.
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the remaining survivors eventually abandoned ship, tried to march south, and they were never seen
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again. But the real danger the one Shackleton would have been thinking about in January of 1915
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was not simply being trapped, it was what came next. If the Endurance were crushed by the ice
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and sank, the men would be left stranded on the drifting ice, exposed and isolated, with no ship,
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no shelter, and no supplies beyond what they could carry. They would be adrift on a frozen ocean,
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dozens of miles from the nearest solid land, which itself was an empty, hostile wasteland.
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If you're looking for an environment comparable to Antarctica, just to give you an idea,
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you won't find it on Earth. In practical terms, it's closer to another planet than anything most
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people have experienced on Earth. Indeed, being stranded there in 1915 would have felt less like
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being lost somewhere on Earth and more like being stranded on Mars. And in fact, 90 years later in
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2005, a French-Italian research facility named Concordia Station would be established on the
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Antarctica Plateau. The station, dubbed White Mars, is still used as a Mars analog by scientists to
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study the effect of Martian weather and isolation on human beings. And this is where Shackleton and
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his men were now trapped. The only saving grace for Shackleton was that, at least at first, food was
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not an immediate concern. The Endurance had been well-provisioned. Bacon, rice, canned meats,
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other preserved stores, including supplies intended to prevent scurvy, which is a horrific
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disease caused by vitamin C deficiency that had killed thousands of sailors across centuries of
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exploration. And most importantly, of course, there was rum and lots of it. But if the ship
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were crushed by the ice, as Shackleton already understood, those stores would be lost, almost
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all of them, beneath the sea. From that point forward, survival would depend on what could be
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there remained only one last resource, the sled dogs.
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each of the dogs would be taken away behind the ice
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out of sight of the others and killed for food.
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described it as the worst moment of the entire expedition.
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Ernest Shackleton could not have been entirely surprised.
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He knew exactly what he was getting himself into.
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This was Shackleton's third expedition to the frozen South.
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he joined a team led by the Antarctic explorer,
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in an attempt to be the first to reach the South Pole.
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They made it to the continent and set out over land,
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traveling on foot and with sled dogs. But the expedition was poorly planned. They didn't bring
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enough food, nor the right kind of food, and they didn't yet understand how to manage a team of sled
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dogs in polar conditions. They pushed farther south than anyone before them, but eventually
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had to turn back. And by that point, Shackleton himself had fallen ill with scurvy. He had
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progressed past the early stage of the disease marked by severe fatigue and joint pain. He was
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entering a more dire phase when hair begins to fall out and the skin develops dark, putrid
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splotches. Later stages are even ghastlier. The gums deteriorate and bleed. Teeth fall out. You
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cough up blood. Old wounds begin to reopen as the body loses its ability to maintain connective
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tissue. And in its final form, scurvy becomes a systemic collapse in the whole body. Organs fail,
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internal bleeding, the body slowly breaking down and eating itself from the inside out. Well,
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Shackleton was ultimately sent home before it reached that point, but it was a fate that had
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defined centuries of maritime exploration. During the age of sail from roughly the 1500s to the
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1800s, it's estimated that as many as half of all sailors on long ocean voyages died in this way.
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Any sailor setting out on a long expedition understood, at least implicitly, that the odds
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of survival were far from certain and that the cost of failure would be an agonizing,
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nightmarish death. And still, they went. Shackleton survived the ordeal, but the expedition failed.
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They had made it farther south than anyone before them, but not far enough. Robert Falcon Scott
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would continue the pursuit of the Pole. Eventually, he made it there in 1912. Along with a small team
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of four men, Scott reached the South Pole, only to discover that Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian explorer,
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had already been there and planted his flag weeks earlier. Defeated, Scott and his men turned for
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home, and none of them survived the return journey. Amundsen himself, by the way, years earlier, had
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already been the first to successfully navigate the Northwest Passage, a route through the Arctic
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that had defeated explorers for centuries. After reaching the South Pole, he would continue to push
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into polar exploration more broadly, eventually becoming the first person to fly across the Arctic
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by air. In 1928, at the age of 55, he set out in a seaplane as part of a rescue mission for a fellow
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explorer who had become stranded near the Arctic, and he never returned. Amundsen's legend was born
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in the polar regions and was perhaps destined to die there. That was true of many of these
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But back in 1907, only a few years after his near-death experience with Scott's expedition,
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Shackleton mounted his own attempt for the pole, this time in command. He explored vast,
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uncharted regions of Antarctica and once again set a new record for the farthest south reached.
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But again, he fell short of the goal, turning back just 97 miles from the prize. After Amundsen
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reached the South Pole in 1911, Shackleton's ambitions shifted. He proposed a new objective
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to cross the entire Antarctic continent over land from sea to sea, passing through the pole itself.
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Now, he knew the risks better than anyone. He had already been pushed to the edge more than once. He'd
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already nearly died, and yet he returned once more to the ice. So put yourself in Shackleton's shoes
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in January of 1950. You have 27 men whose lives depend on you. You're on a ship trapped in the
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ice, cut off from the outside world completely. No way to send for help. No way to communicate
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with anyone back home. The nearest land is a continent where no permanent human settlement
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exists. You are a student of exploration history, so you know the kinds of dangers that have defined
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these journeys, and not just the natural ones, but the human ones as well. Stranded expeditions,
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especially in the polar regions, have been known to break down into chaos, madness, and in some
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cases, murder and cannibalism. One of the most infamous examples occurred in the early 1880s
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when an American expedition under Adolphus Greeley set out to establish a polar research station in
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the Arctic. Twenty-five men departed, only six survived, and one of the 19 who died was executed
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for stealing rations, most of the rest died from starvation and exposure, and in the final stages,
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the survivors, emaciated, desperate, resorted to cannibalism. This is where situations like this
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can lead. These are the stories that would have been rattling around in Shackleton's mind. He knew
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that in conditions like these, good leadership was the only thing standing between order and
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collapse. You had to keep your men alive physically, but you also had to keep them steady mentally.
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You had to preserve discipline and morale and purpose.
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You couldn't be too lenient or order would dissolve.
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You couldn't be too harsh or resentment would turn into mutiny very quickly.
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and failure on either side of the line is fatal for everybody.
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0.81
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not a god or a superhero. He was a man with all the faults that that implies. He was capable of
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pride, irritation, and resentment. And so we can assume that standing on the deck of the Endurance
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in 1915, he felt what any man would feel in that position. Fear, uncertainty, a terrifying awareness
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of how easily everything can go wrong and what the consequences of that would be. But he also knew
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that these feelings could never become apparent to his men. He was the leader. The buck stopped
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with him, so there was no venting of frustrations or finding a shoulder to cry on. Everyone else
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could have visible moments of weakness and despair, and they did, but he could not. As the months
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passed, with the ship locked in the ice, Shackleton imposed structure on the crew's life aboard the
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Endurance. There were regular wake-up times, scheduled meals, daily chores, physical exercise,
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scientific observations continued. The expedition, as far as Shackleton was concerned, and as far as
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and the ship itself provided relative warmth and shelter.
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but psychological collapse, the slow erosion of morale,
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the creeping sense that they might never escape.
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To counter it, Shackleton organized theatrical performances
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One of the most famous photographs from the expedition
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Birthdays and holidays were observed and celebrated,
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and throughout it all, Shackleton ate with his men.
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He remained present among them, maintaining authority,
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In October of 1915, the first unmistakable signs
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the men began hearing sharp unsettling noises from the ship
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The ice was closing in from multiple directions,
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It was the moment Shackleton had been preparing for.
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The expedition, in its original form, was officially over.
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and what supplies they could carry, evacuated onto the ice.
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They established a camp nearby, which they called Ocean Camp.
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finally gave way completely and sank beneath the ice.
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Their last connection to the outside world was gone.
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You're stranded on a sheet of ice somewhere near Antarctica.
00:16:01.180
and drag you into the deep, mistaking you for a seal.
00:16:03.940
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doomed Polar Quest. The expedition's photographer was standing on an ice flow when out of nowhere,
00:16:12.020
a pod of killer whales swarmed around and tried to break the ice into pieces to tip the photographer
00:16:17.800
and his dogs into the water. He narrowly escaped with his life. And the point is, there are hazards
00:16:24.120
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nonprofit. Learn more at gcu.edu. The men survived on the drifting ice for months.
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Food stores steadily dwindled. Then came the desperate moment when they killed and ate the
00:17:44.540
dogs. But even those dozens of dogs would not sustain 28 starving men for very long. Your body
00:17:50.560
burns enormous amounts of energy in extreme cold. Add to that the constant labor required just to
00:17:54.940
the camp going and they were likely burning several thousand calories a day. Starvation in that
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environment does not arrive gradually. It closes in fast and once it has you in its grip it doesn't
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let go. But in April of 1916, 20 months after leaving England, 15 months after their ship became
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trapped in the ice, about six months after they abandoned it, the flows that had imprisoned them
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finally began to break apart. If this had happened when they were still on the ship it would have
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have been cause for celebration but now they had no ship only three small lifeboats and the ground
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where they had pitched their tents was disintegrating around them shackleton ordered his men into the
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boats it was the only choice they had they they fought freezing spray rising winds exhaustion for
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days across open water before finally reaching a small island about 150 miles off the tip of
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the antarctic peninsula it was the first solid ground any of them had touched in nearly 500 days
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but it was not salvation not even close elephant island as it's called is a barren desolate
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windswept void far from any shipping route no one knew they were there no one was coming they could
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not stay if they did they would all die there slowly but inevitably starvation and scurvy lay
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ahead for certain the only question was whether hunger would claim them before the cold one way
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or another nobody was getting out alive shackleton realized their only real chance was to sail to the
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nearest inhabited island, which is called South Georgia Island. The problem, and it was by all
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rights an insurmountable one, was that South Georgia Island lay roughly 800 miles across the
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most violent ocean on earth. The route cut through the so-called furious 50s, where powerful westerly
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winds circle the globe uninterrupted by land. Waves there routinely rise 50 feet or more,
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sometimes more than 100 feet. They would have to cross it in a 22-foot lifeboat about as
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In the Southern Ocean, waves do not behave like water.
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long, heaving ridges of water taller than buildings,
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They would have to thread this small wooden boat
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through this landscape of moving, freezing, liquid mountains.
00:20:10.180
Shackleton knew most of his men were in no condition
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which he would personally lead along with five others.
00:20:19.080
They set out in a small boat called the James Caird,
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aiming for a speck of land 800 miles away across open ocean.
00:20:33.620
whenever the weather allowed, which it rarely did.
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the next nearest land was an uninhabited volcanic island
00:20:49.840
which they almost certainly would, they would die.
00:21:02.400
And just so you appreciate the navigational challenge,
00:21:05.860
that's roughly the distance between Baltimore, Maryland,
00:21:19.700
and all the highway signs along the way will be covered up.
00:21:25.540
given that you're on solid ground, you can drive a car,
00:21:31.120
from spending 500 days stranded in the Antarctic,
00:21:39.300
would require only a tiny fraction of the skill
00:21:42.000
ingenuity and courage and yet i'd be willing to bet that most people today could not do it now
00:21:48.240
imagine i put you on a tiny boat took away your gps your radio maps and means of communication
00:21:52.960
pointed vaguely towards an island 800 miles away and gave you enough food to survive less than a
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month i'm betting that almost everybody in the country myself certainly included would be dead
00:22:03.440
within a couple of weeks i'll even let you attempt it in the comparatively mild waters of the mid
00:22:08.560
Atlantic, and it would still be a death sentence. And yet, 16 days later, after braving towering
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seas nearly capsizing more times than they could count, and exhaustion so deep that they were
00:22:21.660
barely conscious, they reached South Georgia Island. Every man aboard was still alive. They
00:22:27.580
had completed what is widely regarded as one of the greatest small boat voyages in history.
00:22:36.060
They had landed on the uninhabited southern coasts of the island.
00:22:39.600
The whaling stations they needed were on the northern side.
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Now, they couldn't sail around to it because the boat was too damaged.
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And that meant traversing an unmapped mountainous interior that no one had ever crossed in history.
00:22:56.760
They were malnourished, starving, frostbitten, soaked to the bone, exhausted beyond measure.
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over ridges, across glaciers, and through terrain
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They arrived looking less like men than ghosts,
00:23:23.560
as you can imagine, but there was no time to rest.
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and set out to rescue the men he had left behind,
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It took several attempts and a few more months,
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It stands as one of the greatest feats of leadership
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Now, when people hear the story of Ernest Shackleton,
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How did he keep 28 men, including himself, alive
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that should have descended into chaos almost immediately?
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Why go somewhere where so many people before you failed and disappeared and froze, starved, went insane or worse?
00:24:35.500
The modern mind struggles with questions like these because we've been trained to think in terms of utility.
00:24:40.660
We ask what something achieves, what it produces, what practical benefit it delivers.
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But some things resist that kind of calculation.
00:24:48.840
There's nothing practical about crossing oceans and wooden ships to reach unknown lands.
00:24:52.840
There's nothing practical about climbing mountains simply because they exist.
00:24:56.400
nothing practical about pushing into deserts and jungles and ice fields and all the blank spaces
00:25:01.860
at the edge of the map. And yet civilization was built by people who did exactly those things.
00:25:11.860
Several years after returning from his ordeal, Shackleton set out to the Antarctic for his
00:25:16.720
fourth voyage. While anchored in a ship off the coast of South Georgia Island, he had a heart
00:25:20.960
attack and died in his cabin. He was buried there on the island, his grave facing south
00:25:25.920
toward the pole. He tried for the pole the first time, had to turn back with scurvy, tried again
00:25:31.260
and fell short, tried to traverse across the whole continent, but wound up stranded in the ice,
00:25:36.200
went back a fourth time and died before he even left the ship. Now, in a way, you could say that
00:25:40.940
Shackleton failed at everything he ever tried to achieve, but I'd prefer to say that he was a man
00:25:46.280
who simply never took the hint, which is maybe the defining characteristic of all great men.
00:26:12.760
And in that empire, there was an upper middle-class family
00:26:18.560
They loved books, Uncle Tom's Cabin, and the Bible.
00:26:26.440
Both sons went to universities where they were radicalized.
00:26:31.480
and convinced him to try to shoot the country's leader.
00:26:45.960
Then they created their own media organizations
00:26:51.580
Change, after all, was something they could believe in,