Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage

“They took the forty-nine huskies from their kennels and slid each one down to other men waiting below…[n]ot one fight broke out among them, and not a single dog attempted to break away.”

The Endurance crew members were extraordinary on every level. Adventurous, resourceful, and capable of imposing order upon chaos, they were actually relieved to be ordered to abandon their ship as it was being crushed by ice. In order to evacuate the critically-important sled dogs, which would be used to draw their sleds over icy Antarctic terrain, the men devised a makeshift canvas chute from the ship down to the ice below. The author infers that the level-headed calm displayed by the crew actually permeated the behavior of the animals.

“He was, after all, an explorer in the classic mold—utterly self-reliant, romantic, and just a little swashbuckling.”

Shackleton had led a somewhat sordid financial past. At various times, he was involved with schemes to “manufacture cigarettes […], a fleet of taxicabs, mining in Bulgaria […] [and] even digging for buried treasure” (15). He possessed discipline, romantic idealism, and a highly creative imagination and was someone who wanted to make money, experience adventure, and be free of the necessity to conform. While some criticized him for being overly excited about unrealistic ventures, the author notes that Shackleton shared these characteristics with other great leaders.

“But the great leaders of historical record—the Napoleons, the Nelsons, the Alexanders—have rarely fitted any conventional mold, and it is perhaps an injustice to evaluate them in ordinary terms.”

Shackleton was somewhat capricious in his goals and interests. While highly charismatic, fiercely devoted to his crew, and deeply driven to succeed, he did not ascribe to the military conformity of thought and adherence to procedure that one might expect of a leader in this situation.