Endurance is a nonfiction book written by Alfred Lansing. Released in 1959, it recounts the voyage of Ernest Shackleton.
Notable People Within[]
- Ernest Shackleton
rest to be added
Publisher's Summary[]
The harrowing tale of British explorer Ernest Shackleton's 1914 attempt to reach the South Pole, one of the greatest adventure stories of the modern age.
In August 1914, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton boarded the Endurance became locked in an island of ice. Thus began the legendary ordeal of Shackleton and his crew of twenty-seven men. When their ship was finally crushed between two ice floes, they attempted a near-impossible journey over 850 miles of the South Atlantic's heaviest seas to the closest outpost of civilization.
In Endurance, the definitive account of Ernest Shackleton's fateful trip, Alfred Lansing brilliantly narrates the harrowing and miraculous voyage that has defined heroism for the modern age.
Full Summary[]
Part One[]
After spending three days attempting to save their ship, the Endurance, from the ice surrounding her and the pressure it puts on her, the men of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s British Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition give up. All the men leave the ship and bring essential equipment and the sled-dogs with them. Soon after the ship is finally abandoned, she is completely broken together by the ice. This leaves the men effectively stranded in the Weddell Sea with no contact with the outside world and the nearest point offering food and shelter over five hundred kilometres away.
Lansing explains that Shackleton had planned to cross the continent for a while. The excursion consisted of two groups: Shackleton’s main party, which would land in Weddell Sea and continue to the South Pole, finally crossing the continent at Ross Sea, and a secondary one that left food depots along the second leg of the route. Shackleton struggles to find funding for the undertaking, but eventually succeeds. He is already familiar with a lot of the crew members he hires. The Endurance leaves Plymouth in 1914, around the time World War One broke out. After a stop in Buenos Aires where some expedition members are swapped out for other people, they depart for South Georgia.
Two men who came aboard in Buenos Aires secretly stash their friend Perce Blackboro away on the Endurance. The stowaway is soon discovered and, after getting told off by Shackleton, he is given a job aboard. When the ship arrives in South Georgia, the crew decides to stay at the whaling station for a month due to the bad news concerning the ice in the sea. Shackleton uses this time to learn more about the Weddell Sea from experienced men. The Endurance sets sail again, heading through some pack ice for roughly two weeks and heading for Vahsel Bay, where they shall resume their journey on foot. However, the ship soon gets stuck in ice.
See Also[]
- Shackleton's Stowaway by Victoria McKernan
- The Lost City of Z by David Grann