Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage

The eponymously-named ship survives a number of attacks by heavy pack ice in the Weddell Sea prior to succumbing to the pressure. Shackleton had purchased the ship from a Norwegian whaling magnate who had commissioned it built to carry polar-bear hunting expeditions to the Arctic. While it was well built, the Endurance was not designed to withstand the almost supernatural power of the ice, which crushes it slowly over a number of weeks. The crew members almost anthropomorphize the ship in their diary entries and describe “animal like screams” emerging from the ship as she fought back against the crushing ice.

The word “endurance” describes the determination that Shackleton and the men exhibit when faced with the prospect of evacuating the sinking ship and surviving under some of the most arduous circumstances imaginable. On the evening prior to the crew’s evacuation, a huge group of Emperor penguins watch the sinking ship and “uttered a series of weird, mournful, dirge like cries” (73) that almost forecast the suffering the men will endure.

The ice floes both decimate and save the crew of the Endurance. On the one hand, the floes crush the sides of their ship and ultimately cause it to sink.