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Endurance trapped in the ice. |
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Since December 1914, the Endurance had battled unusually
heavy ice conditions, traveling more than 1000 miles from
the remote
whaling stations on the island of South Georgia, at the gateway
to the Antarctic Circle. One hundred miles short of her intended
harbor, new ice conditions brought the Endurance to a halt.
A northeast gale blowing on and off for six straight days,
compressed the pack against the Antarctic ice shelf, trapping
the ship fast within it. Days later, the temperature plummeted
to 9 degrees, as good as cementing the loose pack for the winter.
Meanwhile, the leisurely, unrelenting northerly drift of the
Weddell Sea carried the Endurance within the pack farther and
farther from the Antarctic exploration of the early twentieth
century was unlike exploration of anywhere else on Earth. No
dangerous beasts or savage natives barred the pioneering explorer’s
way. Here, with wind speeds up to nearly 200 miles an hour
and temperatures as extreme as–100 degrees Fahrenheit,
the essential competitions were pure and uncomplicated, being
between man and the unfettered force of raw Nature, and man
and the limits of his own endurance. Antarctica was also unique
in being a place that was genuinely discovered by its explorers.
No indigenous peoples had been living there all along, and
the men who set foot on the continent during this age could
authentically claim to have been where no member of humankind
had ever cast a shadow.
Excerpted from The Endurance: Shackleton's
Legendary Antarctic Expedition by Caroline Alexander (pages
3-4) Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1999, ISBN 0-375-40403-1.
This excerpt is used here solely for non-profit educational
purposes.
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