Members of an expedition team led by Irish explorer Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton pull one of their lifeboats across the snow in the Antarctic, following the loss of the ‘Endurance’.
Sometimes things happen…that challenge our ability to explain. This week, December 5, 1914, a ship called “Endurance” – led by an explorer named Ernest Shackleton – left an island in the South Atlantic called South Georgia. His goal, with 26 men, was to cross Antarctica. God had a far bigger challenge in store for him.
Shackleton planned to sail into the Weddell Sea, north of Antarctica, take five crews, cross the continent, and get picked up on the other side. All that changed when “Endurance” got trapped in ice.
With no way forward and no way back, the crew settled into survival mode. No one gave up, no one thought this was the end of the world. Under Shackleton’s guidance, they rallied, worked together.
For a year, pack ice froze and unfroze, moving their ship northwest in the ice, by wind and currents. They hoped to be free come spring, in September. Those hopes were dashed when, in November 1915, “Endurance” sank. Now, it was Shackleton, his 26 men, and three wooden lifeboats.
Living on ice, Shackleton called it “Patience Camp.” No one panicked, but their path narrowed. Shackleton kept morale high with work, plans. They were on a massive ice floe, which rose and fell against others, treacherous, until it broke. Shackleton ordered his men to follow him to a dot.
In three lifeboats, they covered 346 miles until they hit a frozen sliver, Elephant Island, a miracle. Shackleton had said they could do it, and all made it. From 20-foot boats, men climbed onto the gravel above the tide. It was land. They lived on birds, bits of saved food. Shackleton led by example.
They also kept the calendar, ate frugally until Easter, a goal set by Shackleton. On Easter, they ate more, a reward, a special day. They had planned, prayed, been patient, and celebrated.
Their ship crushed, assumed dead, surviving on frozen gravel, Shackelton ordered the carpenter to raise the sides of one boat, equip it with a sail, and pack four weeks of food. Six would aim for another dot, 800 miles by the stars – South Georgia Island, the place they had started. They believed.
If they missed that dot in the vastness of the Atlantic, from where they started a year and a half earlier, that glacier-covered South Georgia island, it was over. All knew it, no one said it. Instead, Shackleton explained exactly how it would work, no doubt, assured them all he would return for them.
Such was the faith in his faith, trust in his leadership, belief in his vision of the future, that those six who departed on what seemed an impossible mission left behind a group confident of their return.
For the next 15 days, the 20-foot boat was tossed, hit by 200-foot waves, navigator intent on stars, southern storms an unbroken string, daily working not to capsize, not to lose the bearing.
At day 15, by another miracle, they spotted South Georgia Island, but in a real hurricane. They could not get near, so they rode it out. That storm apparently sank a 500-ton steamer. Unable to get around, their only chance was cliffside, climbing unmapped glaciers, avoiding fissures, across and down.
While no one had ever crossed these glaciers, Shackleton and two of the men – Worsley and Crean – set to it. Nails in their shoes, they carried rope, climbed for 36 hours, and never forgot it. A day and a half later, descending glaciers no one had ever climbed, they arrived at the whaling station.
Stumbling into the home of the captain who had seen them off, they were unrecognizable. He asked who they were. Shackleton said it was he and that they had climbed the island’s glaciers.
The man said it was not so; Shackleton and his crew had perished. Suddenly, realizing it was Shackleton, he collapsed in tears. Shackleton then rigged a boat, got the three who had come with him, and then sailed the 800 miles and rescued his crew, who knew he would return.
Asked how they got up the glaciers, Shackleton wrote: “When I look back on those days, I have no doubt Providence guided us…I know that during that long racking march of 36 hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers…it seemed to me often that we were four, not three.”
“I said nothing to my companions on the point, but afterward, Worsley said to me, ‘Boss, I had a curious feeling on the march, that there was another person with us.’ Cream confessed the same.”
Shackleton ended this way: “One feels the dearth of human words, the roughness of mortal speech, in trying to describe things intangible …” True, yet we try. And his inspiration…endures.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, Maine attorney, ten-year naval intelligence officer (USNR), and 25-year businessman. He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (North Country Press, 2018), and “Cherish America: Stories of Courage, Character, and Kindness” (Tower Publishing, 2024). He is the National Spokesman for AMAC. Today, he is running to be Maine’s next Governor (please visit BobbyforMaine.com to learn more)!
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