Lansing's Endurance: Shakleton's Incredible Voyage

Icebergs behoove the soul
(both being self-made from elements least visible)
to see them so: fleshed, fair, erected indivisible.

From “The Imaginary Iceberg” by Elizabeth Bishop

Alfred Lansing opens his account with, “The order to abandon ship was given at 5 p.m.” He proceeds to unfold a carefully researched, non-fiction retelling of the events of Earnest Shakleton’s failed trans-Antarctic voyage between 1914 and 1916.  Shakleton and his men spend nearly a year moored in the ice pack of the Wendell Sea, survive several open water voyages, and somehow endure over two years drifting in the Antarctic wasteland.

I will be the first to say that this is not my normal reading fare.  Long passages discussing Antarctic geography and varieties of blubber? Sign me up!  Not so much.  But, for some reason, each time I pick up Lansing’s book, I am immediately engrossed in the drama of man versus nature that threatens to turn man against man, and finally, forces man to confront himself.

Lansing, pulling his material from diaries, logs, and interviews, shows journalistic restraint in crafting his characters.  There is little to no commentary on the men, unless it comes directly from a diary or conversation.  The result is closer to a play than a novel.  Interpretive work is required on the part of the reader, as he or she is left to fill in the emotions that build after months of drifting on the ice pack.  Like any well-told story, there is a perfect balance between explanatory passages (I now know significantly more about Antarctica and 19^th-20^th explorers than I did prior to this reading) and dramatic events to complete the picture of a suspenseful journey.

Despite my enjoyment of this good story, I am cynical about the entire project; I am annoyed by the mere idea of Antarctic exploration.  I wonder why we should celebrate the great deeds of a man who triumphed through a completely unnecessary voyage.  About halfway though Endurance I begin to question Shakleton’s motives.  Why again did you put yourself (and your men) in this position?  Oh that’s right: Glory and Fame ... for Ernest Shakleton. There seems to be a categorical difference between enduring through pain and suffering for a great cause (or due to an unavoidable situation) and the enduring of Shakleton and his men.  I understand honoring the martyr and the soldier; these women and men endure, self-sacrificially, for a greater good than themselves.  The explorers of the 19^th and 20^th centuries achieved incredible feats of ingenuity and endurance for their own glory and the glory of humanity.  Stepping back from the feats themselves, this seems to be not the best of humanity, but the worst.

But here I must be honest—the endurance I display throughout my life has more in common with Shakleton than the martyr and soldier. Most of what I must endure is due to my choices (or the choices of the human race). This is the nature of our endurance in a fallen world. It is we who have gotten ourselves into trouble in the first place.  We must endure inequalities and trials because we made them.  Trouble is not thrust upon us; we create the crisis that must be endured.

As the last ditch attempt to save his crew is about to begin, Lansing writes of Shakleton, “The truth was that he felt rather out of his element.  He had proved himself on land.  He had demonstrated there beyond all doubt his ability to pit his matchless tenacity against the elements—and win.  But the sea is a different sort of enemy.  Unlike the land, where courage and the simple will to endure can often see a man through, the struggle against the sea is an act of physical combat, and there is no escape.  It is a battle against a tireless enemy in which man never actually wins; the most that he can hope for is not to be defeated” (221).

Shakleton begins his adventure proudly christening his ship Endurance, after his family’s motto: Fortitude vincimus—“By endurance we conquer.”  But, by the bitter end of his voyage, conquering has become survival.  Because of the immensity of his opponent, Shakleton’s self-glorifying pursuit has become a place where he must humbly endure, relying upon the whims of nature, not his own ingenuity. As Bishop reminds us, the iceberg behooves, or requires, something of us.  We do not require anything of it.  The humility of this position is where Shakleton ends.  He earns glory through suffering and enduring, not through conquering.  It’s a kind of grace that the seedbed of sanctification might be troubles of our own making.  

Find it on Amazon: Lansing, Alfred. Endurance: Shakleton’s Incredible Voyage. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1959.

Comments

[Byrne Power]

Rebecca thanks for writing this thoughtful review.

I'm fairly familiar with the details of the Shackleton expedition as well as the Scott tragedy and Perry's northern journeys. You've raised a few questions for me about the nature of exploration. While the fame and glory aspect was there do you have any evidence that it was that central a feature to Shackleton? That is do you think he lived for the adulation he would receive upon returning home? Or was it something else? Since he kept going back time after time and eventually died and was buried on the extraordinarily remote South Georgia Island I wonder what it was that drove him on.

I must confess to being attracted to the allure of exploration in that older sense and I find it an extension of the same impulse that produced modern science. Should we question all exploration? I'm not sure. Though it does occur to me that we have really used up much of what was so attractive about trying to find the extremes of the earth. The poles were two of the last big goals to be achieved. After that it is largely just filling in a few remaining blank spots on the map. And now there are no blanks left. The satellite has finished of that kind of dream. (Though the ocean still has some allure, but like outer space it is quite expensive to get to.)

I also can't help wondering if, like science, the old dream of exploration wasn't related to a Christian perspective of an open world that we were allowed to explore by a God who has created a knowable world. Now however I find that without any apparent exploration left it's curious that people subject themselves to extreme sports instead. Why? It's an interesting point to ponder. Thanks for provoking me a bit to think about these things. And I do actually believe there is plenty left to explore... it's just not blank spots on a map anymore.