Ernest Shackleton: Enduring The Impossible

This episode delves into the remarkable survival story of Ernest Shackleton and his crew aboard the Endurance, as they attempted to cross Antarctica.

1. Shackleton's exceptional leadership in crisis, inspiring loyalty and hope among his crew.
2. The importance of adaptability and resilience in overcoming seemingly insurmountable challenges.
3. Effective crisis management can often hinge on maintaining morale and unity.
4. The power of purposeful action in navigating through hardships.
5. Shackleton's ability to plan meticulously while being ready to improvise as needed.

1. Introduction to Shackleton

An overview of Ernest Shackleton's background and the beginning of the Endurance expedition. Key themes include leadership and perseverance. Ben Wilson: "Today, we are talking about Ernest Shackleton, the great British adventurer and explorer."

2. The Trap of Ice

Describes how the Endurance was trapped by the ice and the initial reactions of the crew. Ben Wilson: "The ship was being crushed slowly, a little at a time."

3. Survival Strategies

Outlines the survival strategies employed by Shackleton and his crew to endure their harsh conditions. Ben Wilson: "They had to rely on their own skills and will to live."

4. Leadership in Crisis

Focuses on Shackleton's leadership style and how it influenced his crew's survival. Ben Wilson: "When you are in a hopeless situation, pray for Shackleton."

1. Lead by Example: In any leadership role, show resilience and determination.
2. Embrace Flexibility: Adapt strategies as situations evolve.
3. Maintain Team Morale: Keep spirits high to foster group cohesion.
4. Plan Thoroughly: Prepare meticulously for potential challenges.
5. Leverage Every Resource: Utilize available resources creatively during crises.

When Ernest Shackleton's ship is trapped in Antarctic ice, he and his crew must figure out how to survive and make their way home. On this episode, we explore the dramatic story of The Endurance and the leadership lessons that can be learned from Shackleton.

People

Ernest Shackleton

Companies

None

Books

"Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage" by Alfred Lansing, "South: The Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition" by Ernest Shackleton

Guest Name(s):

None

Content Warnings:

None

Ben Wilson

Shes going, boys. I think its time to get off. The ship was breaking up. She was being crushed. Not all at once, but slowly, a little at a time.

The pressure of 10 million tons of ice was driving in against her sides and dying as she was, she cried in agony. Her frames and planking her immense timbers, many of them almost a foot thick, screamed as the killing pressure mounted. And when her timbers could no longer stand, the strain they broke with a report like artillery fire.

When Ernest Shackleton had set out with a crew of 27 men, he had hoped to cross Antarctica. Unusually bad conditions meant that their ship was slowly hemmed in and eventually trapped in the middle of a giant ice floe miles from the coast of Antarctica. Nevertheless, for months, hope had persisted. There might be some way to get the ship loose and either make for the antarctic coast or at least sail back for the safety of home. The realization that the ship would not escape the ice flow came on gradually and then all at once, the men hastily constructed a camp and then watched as pressure from the ice floes tore the ship to shreds.

As the masts cracked and crumbled and the ship slowly disappeared under the ice, the men of the endurance took stock of their situation. It was 1915. They were hundreds of miles from civilization in one of the most inhospitable places on earth with limited supplies. Everything about their situation was uncertain. They didnt even have solid ground beneath their feet.

And their ever changing location as the ice floes moved made forecasting a future or making a plan very difficult. They had some sledges and some snow dogs to pull them with. They had three lifeboats and they had their own skills and will to live and they would need it. As they stared out toward the bleak white horizon, as they considered the cold and the lack of supplies, their own unsteady position and their isolation, one thing became terribly they were all likely to die out here.

B

I'm gonna show you how great I am. This would have tiny power. I just wanna say from the bottom of me heart I'd like to take this chance to apologize to absolutely nobody.

Ben Wilson

Hello, and welcome to how to take over the world. This is Ben Wilson. Today we are talking about Ernest Shackleton, the great british adventurer and explorer. Today, in particular, we're going to explore the story of the endurance that is his ship that he took toward Antarctica with the intent of crossing the continent. But as you heard in that introduction, it got caught in the ice and it's a great story of overcoming and survival.

Shackleton is one of the classic stories of great leadership. There are Shackleton seminars where you can learn to lead like him. There have been many books written about him, specifically about the story of the endurance and about his leadership style. And it's easy to see why he has generated so much interest when you study him. There's a great quote from one of his men who compares him to other explorers of the era and he explains what set him apart.

This guy says, for scientific leadership, give me Scott. That's another explorer for swift and efficient travel, Amundsen. But when you are in a hopeless situation, when there seems no way out, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton. And so thats one of the things to learn from Shackleton, how to lead in difficult circumstances in a seemingly hopeless situation, how to defy the odds, how to inspire people to do the impossible. Its also an incredible adventure story, just unbelievable.

A great story of the human capacity to survive despite unbelievably difficult circumstances. My sources for this episode were endurance Shackletons incredible voyage by Alfred Lansing. That is the one I will be pulling from the most. It's actually one of the best books I have ever read. Incredibly well written, and a great account of one of the greatest stories of all time.

Another source I use is Shackleton's own account called south the story of Shackleton's last expedition. And then I also reference a little bit Shackleton by Ranulph Fiennes, although not so much that one covers his whole life. And in this episode I'm going to be mostly talking about the story of the endurance. But I cited a couple times. Okay, with all that said, lets get into it.

This is the story of Ernest Shackleton and the endurance.

Ernest Shackleton was born in County Kildare, Ireland on February 15, 1874. He was the second of ten children and like many of the people we cover on this podcast, he was not considered bright as a child. He did really poorly in school and this reminds me of many other people. Thomas Edison, for example, did poorly in school. His schoolteacher called him adult, thought he was just dumb.

Similarly, Mister Beast was a terrible student and he thought he wasn't very bright growing up. I haven't done an Elon Musk episode yet, but similarly his teachers did not think that he was all that bright as a child. And what all these people share in common is a very addictive personality that makes it difficult for them to focus on things that they are not interested in. And that was Shackleton as well. He was of course very smart, but he had this intense will, this intense desire to do what he was interested in.

And so he was a voracious reader, but only when it came to reading things that he wanted to read. And he could hardly be bothered to read or study other things, the things that he was assigned in school. And that meant that, yes, he was a poor student. He didn't get very good grades, and he really struggled in the education system. He always had a thirst for adventure and exploration.

So he joined the merchant navy. As I mentioned, he was, in fact, quite intelligent as well as enterprising, curious and good with people. So he rose quickly. Once he became a sailor. In his early thirties, he made a name for himself on the Nimrod expedition, where he, along with his companions, tried to reach the South Pole.

They ran out of food and were able to make it, but they reached further south than any person ever had, and it was a major success. Upon his return to England, he became a major celebrity and was knighted. He was now Sir Ernest Shackleton. So this happens in 1908 when Shackleton is 34 years old, and he was beaten to the South Pole just a short time later by the norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. And so Shackleton is a celebrity.

He's accomplished a lot, but he is kind of disappointed from this loss to Amundsen. And so he comes up with a plan. He can't be the first man to the South Pole, but he can be the first man to cross Antarctica, the whole continent. So he'll land on one side, sledge across the entire continent, you know, using a sled pulled by sled dogs, and then get picked up on the other side of the continent by a different ship. And Shackleton pitches it as an opportunity to regain Britain's honor.

They had been beaten to the North Pole by the Americans, beaten to the South Pole by the Norwegians. But this would be an even more impressive accomplishment than either of those. Shackleton wrote. From the sentimental point of view, it is the last great polar journey that can be made. It will be a greater journey than the journey to the pole and back.

And I feel it is up to the british nation to accomplish this, for we have been beaten at the conquest of the North Pole and beaten at the first conquest of the South Pole. There now remains the largest and most striking of all journeys, the crossing of the continent. So Lansing comments. He says the plan was typical shackleton, purposeful, bold and neat. He had not the slightest doubt that the expedition would achieve its goal.

The whole undertaking was criticized in some circles as being too audacious, and perhaps it was, but if it hadn't been audacious, it wouldn't have been to Shackleton's liking. He was, above all, an explorer in the classic mold. Utterly self reliant, romantic and just a little swashbuckling. Okay, I like that description, especially the use of the word purposeful. Okay.

So he says the plan was typical of shackleton and the first word he uses is purposeful. And that was actually Shackleton's defining characteristic. Here's another quote from Lansing. He says, whatever his mood whether it was gay and breezy or dark with rage he had one pervading characteristic. He was purposeful.

And we'll come back to this later. But I think that explains Shackleton's leadership more than any other characteristic. Purposefulness. He never forgot what the main objective was and he was really great at focusing and shutting out anything else. So he's got this plan to cross Antarctica.

But what do you need? Well, the first thing he needs is a crew for the journey. There's an urban legend of a job posting that Shackleton puts out for his crew. Maybe you've seen it. Here's the supposed ad.

It says, men wanted for hazardous journey low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness, safe return doubtful honor and recognition in event of success. And it turns out this never happened. There is no evidence of this job posting ever existing. And the simple reason it never existed is Shackleton never had to seek out a crew. Here's what Lansing writes about.

What really happened when Shackleton announced the idea for this expedition. He says finding volunteers to take part in the expedition proved simple. When Shackleton announced his plans he was deluged by more than 5000 applications from persons including three girls who asked to go along. Almost without exception, these volunteers were motivated solely by the spirit of adventure for the salaries offered were little more than token payments for the services expected. They ranged from about $240 a year for an able seaman to $750 a year for the most experienced scientists.

Okay, so the job posting is fake but the idea is actually kind of true. People signed up in the thousands for a job with low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness and low chances of a safe return because they were attracted to the excitement of this expedition. And I think that goes to show the impact of having an exciting vision. People want to be a part of it. They have this craving to do something bigger than themselves.

I find his interviewing style very curious. So he's got, you know, 5000 people that he needs to get through. And I can't think of anyone else who I've studied who conducted interviews like Shackleton did listen to this again from Lansing. He says, in the matter of selecting newcomers Shackleton's methods would appear to be almost capricious. If he liked the look of a man, he was accepted.

If he didnt, the matter was closed and these decisions were made with lightning speed. There is no record of any interview that Shackleton conducted with a prospective expedition member lasting more than five minutes. And I guess if this style speaks to anything, its trusting your instinct because as it turns out, this wild process for interviewing turns out to be very successful. Shackleton puts together a great crew of 27 men who would turn out to perform admirably under incredibly trying circumstances. And there are some great stories from these interviews of the types of things that he asked.

So here's one. It says, Leonard Hussey, an irrepressible, peppery little individual was signed on as meteorologist even though he had practically no qualifications for the position at the time. Shackleton simply thought Hussey, quote, looked funny. And the fact that he had recently returned from an expedition as an anthropologist to the torrid Sudan appealed to Shackleton's sense of whimsy. Hussey immediately took an intensive course in meteorology and later proved to be very proficient.

Another one, Doctor Alexander Macklin, one of the two surgeons, caught Shackleton's fancy by replying when Shackleton asked him why he was wearing glasses. Many a wise face would look foolish without spectacles and Reginald James was signed on as physicist. After Shackleton inquired about the state of his teeth whether he suffered from varicose veins if he was good tempered and if he could sing. At the last question, James looked puzzled. Oh, I don't mean any Caruso stuff, Shackleton reassured him.

But I suppose you can shout a bit with the boys. Despite the instantaneous nature of these decisions Shackleton's intuition for selecting compatible men rarely failed. Okay, so these are the kinds of questions that he's asking people in five minutes. Can you imagine this? Like you, it's only a crew of 27 people.

They are obviously going to have your life in their hands. Like you're really gonna be relying on these men and he's asking them, so why do you wear glasses? And how are your teeth? Do you have any varicose veins? And do you like to sing?

This is the kind of stuff that mattered to him and I think actually what he's going for is look, on a trip to Antarctica, we are really going to be cooped up in this ship for a long time and so we really need to get along. And so that's all I need to know. Like do I like you? And I can figure that out in five minutes. So that's how he does it.

Shackleton had more difficulty with finding funding for the trip than he does finding manpower. But he eventually does get the money squared away. He acquires a ship, lays out the plans and gets everything prepared. And one of the things he obviously has to prepare for and get squared away is the victualling the food. He spends a lot of time figuring out what they are going to eat, how much of it they're going to need and how they are going to get it.

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So the ship that Shackleton acquires had originally been named the Polaris, but he renames it the endurance because of his family motto. By endurance, we conquer. And I love it. That's, that's a great motto. By endurance, we conquer.

I'm just going to keep going until I win. But at the last minute he is thrown a curveball. He's got the ship, he's got everything prepared. And world War one breaks out right before they're supposed to leave. He and the crew wonder if they should just abandon the journey in order to assist their country, their patriots.

And so they think, I mean, is this the time to be, you know, taking all these, you know, healthy, capable men and taking them out of the field? So they send a letter to the government inquiring whether they should call the whole thing off. And they are sent a one word response, proceed. And Winston Churchill himself later sends a longer letter explaining why the government wished for them to proceed with the journey instead of coming to help fight the war. So with those instructions in hand, the endurance sets sail from England on August 8, 1914.

Their first stop is Buenos Aires, Argentina, where they pick up 69 sled dogs. And unknown to Shackleton, one stowaway. Shackleton is really upset when he finds out about this. I mean, he had laid out all these plans very carefully, right, the food down to the day. I mean, of course, they had a little slack, right?

But he's planning on a certain number of people. And so, you know, this throws a wrench into his plans and for no good reason, just because a few of the men thought it would be fun and funny. The stowaways name was Blackborough, and Shackleton screams at him, really lays into him, and then gives him an ominous, half joking, but not really joking threat, it says. Shackleton paused abruptly and put his face up close to Blackborough's. Finally he thundered, if we run out of food and anyone has to be eaten, you will be first.

Do you understand? A smile slowly spread over black burroughs round, boyish face, and he nodded. So after leaving Buenos Aires, they head south and they make their last stop at a remote outpost called South Georgia island. It's a small, rocky island just outside the antarctic circle. There was a whaling outpost there, so it was the last chance for them to resupply, gather news, and have contact with civilization before setting off for Antarctica.

But the news they got at South Georgia was not good. They're asking the whalers, you know, what are things like, how are conditions? The intent was to sail through the Weddell Sea is what it's called. And so you can think of it as like a giant bay almost, that the continent of Antarctica forms because the Weddell Sea is protected by the continent from currents and waves and things like that. It's very still.

It's a sea. And so it has a propensity to gather these huge ice flows. The ice just kind of hangs out and stays there and makes it really difficult to get through. Well, this year it was really full of ice. You know, the whalers tell them that the conditions in the Weddell Sea were worse than they had ever seen in all the years that they had been there.

But, I mean, you know, if you're Shackleton, what are you going to do with the World war in full swing? If they turn back now, it could be years before they have a chance to return. If ever, like, this is their shot. And so, on December 5, 1914, the endurance sets out from south Georgia. Almost immediately, the conditions in the Weddell Sea conspired to make their journey impossible.

December is the middle of the summer in the southern hemisphere. And this was intentional. They were trying to go through during the summer when the ice floes were at their lowest and most navigable. But at every turn, they encountered more and more impassable ice. Shackleton wrote of this period in the journey, it was as though the spirits of the Antarctic were pointing us to the backward track, the one track we were determined not to follow.

Just over a month later, they were able to navigate themselves to within sight of land. By February, the endurance found itself trapped in the middle of an enormous ice flow. It being the southern summer, much of the ice was young and mushy. And so for weeks, multiple attempts were made to break out, to push through to, you know, they would get out of the ship and use picks, saws and shovels to break up the ice and then try and, you know, sail forward and cut through, cut a passage, but all to no avail. By February 24, Shackleton realized that they were truly trapped and that the endurance would need to winter where they were.

Summer was turning to fall and the young ice that had impeded them was freezing and gathering, cementing them in place. As one of the crew put it, the endurance was frozen like an almond in the middle of a chocolate bar. Lansing says that quote among the men, the realization that the endurance was really beset for good came very slowly, like a kind of creeping resignation, a bad dream from which there was no waking. Anxiously, they watched each day, but the face of the pack remained substantially unchanged. This itself was not necessarily cause for panic.

Though frozen in place, the endurance was upright and not completely uncomfortable. Obviously, Antarctica is very cold, but the ship had extremely thick walls that made it really well insulated. So, like, yes, it was cold, but inside the ship, with proper clothing and a little bit of heat, conditions were not that bad. And there were also plenty of supplies that could last them through the winter. And these could be supplemented by hunting seals and penguins.

The hunting was actually quite easy because in the Antarctic, seals and penguins have no land predators or, you know, ice surface predators, only sea predators like killer whales and sharks. So when a human approached, they just stood there and watched until the hunter closed in for the kill. Sometimes they didn't even have to shoot them, they would just club them over the head. And so with this hunting and their supplies, food's not a concern. At first, the primary preoccupation was with where the endurance would end up.

The ice flow that they were trapped in was being pushed by wind and current. Lansing says quote, the endurance was one microcosmic spec, 144ft long and 25ft wide, embedded in nearly 1 million sq. Mi of ice that was slowly being rotated by the irresistible clockwise sweep of the winds and currents.