S2 Book Club: Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground today we're going to continue our book club series by discussing a book that is normally something that would be outside of our wheelhouse and that is endurance shackleton's incredible Voyage to the Antarctic by Alfred Lancing just as a bit of an admin note I'm kind of away from my desk at the moment so we'll have to deal with an audio only version for this time and this book is sort of out of the theme of things that we would normally talk about here but that's a good thing uh because one I I'm glad that we actually had a nice quiet read for the holiday season this time around and it's good to get a perspective on things like leadership and persevering in times of adversity that I think is a really good way to start the new year off right and what better way to do that than talking about the ultimate fateful Voyage shackleton's expedition to the Antarctic so for those of you who are unaware of shackleton's fateful Voyage to the Antarctic this is the epitome of survival stories this is an incredible tale of perseverance even when all hope has been lost just as a very brief overview for those of you who are not aware of the story The Imperial trans Antarctic expedition of 1914 was Sir Ernest shackleton's attempt to cross the Antarctic continent that was the original goal however the story became much more well known for what happened afterwards as his ship the endurance immediately became beset in ice and eventually was crushed and sank over a period of hundreds of days the crew eventually had to abandon ship and spend many many months trapped on several ice flows as they attempted to make their way towards any form of civilization after spending many months with no hope of being rescued or trapped on several ice flows they were able to launch their lifeboats and reach Elephant Island once they reached Elephant Island they were certainly not saved yet as the island was uninhabited and they still had an 800 mile journey ahead of them which Shackleton undertook with a of his crewman to the island of South Georgia but wait we're not done yet once Shackleton and his Advanced party were able to land on South Georgia they then had to scale and climb extremely tall mountains that no one had ever climbed before in order to reach a whaling station which was eventually their source of rescue after almost 500 Days Shackleton finally made contact with a wailing station Shackleton was able to send ships back to rescue the rest of his crew on Elephant Island miraculously throughout the this entire story not a single member of the crew was lost everyone survived in a situation which would have killed probably most of the crew had they not possessed extreme qualities which is why this story is an incredible Testament to the strength of the human Spirit really and the will to survive Against All Odds now obviously shackleton's story has been told and retold hundreds of times in the century since the disaster occurred so I can't really add too much to it from that perspective and if you would like to go down the rabbit hole of learning about Antarctic expedition and some of the Burly characters involved in that era of the Golden Age of Exploration you can certainly do that today I thought I would look at the story through the lens as always of the prepared citizenry and see what lessons we can learn from an Antarctic expedition that took place over a hundred years ago speaking of the actual book itself uh Alfred lansing's 1956 book on shackleton's Voyage is probably the most well-known contemporary retail telling of the tale like I mentioned in my notes here this is a great book for young adults or for adding to say like a homeschool curriculum uh because there's no profanity there's no vulgarity and any sort of Sailor language is really only talked about an abstract really the only part of the story that for me was was uh quite unfortunate was uh how the the crew had to kill their dog sled teams uh both for food and because they uh they didn't want them to suffer because they couldn't feed them so uh that that is quite the unfortunate part of the story but other than that the this book would be I think quite good for a lot of young adults who are looking for a little bit of uh exploration reading so moving right on to the lessons learned from this book at least from the perspective that I'm trying to to come at this from uh one of the main things that you kind of get early on is that thinking strategically to be able to anticipate problems weeks or even months in advance is is really a valuable skill uh that Shackleton gained through his experience and it's something that's really hard to Quant ify but it's not just him and that leads into the second point which is that Shackleton kind of gets all of the credit because he was obviously the leader of this Expedition and he undoubtedly possessed great great leadership efforts and and prowess but that is not really all on his shoulders he also had a great team behind him for the most part he had a great second in command he had a great first officer he had a really good team that was willing to be led again for the most part like I mentioned Shak had a really great team but some people on the team possessed some qualities that perhaps were not ideal though I'm sure at the time this sort of thing was not uh really okay to talk about openly but I'm really glad uh that this actually is a good part of the story because it definitely shows how Timeless some of this is what I mean by this is that sometimes when we're trying to learn stuff from history we we fall prey to again the over romanticized version of the uh Godlike hero right and though the phrase uh history is told or written by the Victor is is a common phrase I would argue that history is a lot of times written by the losers because the losers have an awful lot of free time on their hands and nobody's really paying attention so a lot of times what you'll get is a story of a real historical incident that is completely devoid of any negativity of any negative personality traits everyone's perfect in every way you get this a lot with the history of warfare right especially with with like generals and and uh military leaders of some kind Lancing in this book of course having access to Diaries and really trying to get to the bottom of the story was able to really convey several personalities that didn't really quite work so well we all like to imagine that shackle and's crew was just one gigantic fantastic team of people who got together at all times and that certainly wasn't the case as a matter of fact Shackleton himself really did remember uh some of the bad behavior that was undertaken uh by a couple the crewmen for instance uh there were a couple people who were just extremely narcissistic uh workshy they uh were lazy uh even during a time where you know their ship their their lifeboats uh were about to sink you know he still had problems with people not wanting to do their share of the work which the fact that these people were able to actually work through these problems at the time is just just astounding because I can't imagine uh doing that but but again these moments where we sort of see the narcissism of some characters the selfishness of some characters and the the laziness of some characters during a time where literally their their lives depend on their efforts this makes the whole idea of these negative personality traits be really being Timeless at some point in our lives all of us will have worked with an annoying coworker right but the fact that these guys not just Shackleton but a lot of the other crew were able to actually get these people to be productive members of the crew and were able to keep pushing forward after hundreds of days is just remarkable right and you don't really get that feeling from the book of how they were able to do this other than the fact that they possessed very very interesting qualities of being able to read personality traits which leads to the next point which is that uh a lot of times leadership is sometimes solely about keeping people from killing each other and to a larger degree babysitting the troublemakers this is very commonly mentioned in the book it's almost like every chapter Shack is keeping the troublemakers around him making them sleep in his tent or being put on you know in his boat uh because he wanted to keep them uh under a close eye not so much because they were workshy a lot of times but because they uh could potentially so desent with the rest of the crew and he didn't want that whatsoever Shackleton was very very attentative to this and this is one of the reasons why he's touted to such a great leaders because he was able to determine very easily and very quickly what people were thinking and the s that they had um a lot of the times men were chosen for certain tasks not because they were the most capable or best crewman for the job but because Shackleton wanted to personally keep an eye on them and this is because Shackleton realized that morale and descent will kill a team faster than anything else though it's not explicitly stated in the book you really get the idea that shackleton's biggest concerns and his biggest adversaries and his biggest enemies through throughout this entire crisis we're not the cold we're not the wind we're not the ice no his biggest problems were morale Shackleton spent most of his time distracting people from the situation that they were in and this is where we get a lot of the doctrine from regarding like survival tactics right what do they tell you when you're in a situation where you can't really Escape like you're lost in the woods or a drift at sea or something like that what's the number one thing stay busy don't just sleep all day keep to a schedule make sure that you're actually putting your efforts to good use because that will keep you from getting complacent complacency will kill a team and will kill a person's will to survive very very quickly Shackleton pioneered that over a hundred years ago which is just remarkable and he really had to to be honest because let's face it the environment that this crew was trapped in was tremendous and this is kind of another one of those lessons that that is really just kind of a departure from what you might think which is that the idea of cold just absolutely blisteringly cold conditions these are really tremendous forces that we almost always underestimate especially in our modern times right reading through this book in sort of a passive way really sets you to thinking about how hypothermia and other cold injuries will really kill you quite quickly uh in some cases quite slowly but in many cases hypothermia and other cold related injuries are a major killer just thinking back for me at least when I lived in the Pacific Northwest you know being you know born and raised in the American Southeast uh for me cold was you know something that was anything less than 50° was was kind of chilly uh but when I spent several years up in the Pacific North West man it it's just it's Indescribable and guys in the military know what I'm talking about because you a lot of times you'll have people that are in the military that uh are born and raised in you know the American South or the Southwest where it's you know pretty hot most of the year and they're just not used to cold temperatures but it's it's more than just cold it's the high humidity that's the problem when I was doing some uh search and rescue work on up in the Pacific Northwest I I really when I first started thought it was kind of odd that most of the time people would focus more on hypothermia than anything else like if you look at the contents of the gear that people would bring for like a rescue mission it would be mostly things that would be preventative of cold you know multiple uh ISO a sleep mats multiple blankets tarps shelters all kinds of stuff and we would take this stuff out even when the temperatures were barely below 50 or 60° you know and that's because if you're laying on the ground and you're in a damp environment over a period of hours and hours and sometimes days you are going to die uh from hypothermia because it is you you will be chilled to the Bone it's crazy because I've spent time in some really cold places where you know the ground is just Frozen for a lot of the year but man during during my uh years in the Pacific Northwest I don't think I ever was as cold as I was then even though the temperatures rarely dipped below freezing uh unless you're going up in altitude you know uh most of the time down in The Valleys the temperature year round didn't really get below freezing kind of hovered at maybe you know 40° maybe upper 30s for you know a lot of the winter but man I I was never as cold in my life as during that time because the humidity is so high so you get the kind of idea that from this book cold is just something that's really hard to describe unless you're able to experience it yourself this book to me just every page I think I I just kept reinforcing my own idea of why I carry uh during the winter time even in the Southeast here uh I carry a lot of uh hypothermia preventing gear uh stuff that people probably would not uh carry otherwise so that's just kind of an interesting side note at least for me personally but one of the major Lessons Learned at least for me in the context of what we're really trying to prepare for as we move forward into 2024 is that some disasters take months it's it's really hard to kind of put into words and to understand that a lot of times some disasters are going to take a very very long time to recover from I think that in the prepping and preparedness world we kind of get stuck into a couple of different camps right we get stuck into those which you know I think prior to 2019 was probably a minority of people which think that the lights are going to go out and they're going to stay out forever right we're going to have some kind of EMP or nuclear war or something like that and we get to live out our own you know post-apocalyptic fantasies that way the other side of things is that people want to prepare for the three-day emergency emergencies that are not going to last for more than 3 days right and there's of course some crossover between the two and we can talk a lot about you know risk assessment and things like that but by and large it's really hard to to kind of get through your head that sometimes for some emergencies it's really going to take many many months to recover from and when I mean emergencies I'm I I really don't mean getting trapped on an ice flow for years right I mean things like losing your job right in today's economy you know losing your job is not a is not really a good thing it's not something that's easily recoverable from especially in uh depending on what your profession is that can be just as devastating as some of the more obscure things we may prepare for right but we don't prepare for losing our job a lot of times a lot of us you know prepare for things like you know being able to produce water you know water purification and filtration and stuff like that's very common everybody's got water tablets in their pockets these days everybody's got a filter in their backpack or something like that but how many people are prepared for not being able to buy hamburger at the grocery store because it's been too expensive for the past 9 months for anyone to afford and the meat that you're able to buy at the grocery store is already rotten because nobody's willing to buy it because it's too expensive how do you prepare for something like that that is a monthlong crisis you know and it's really hard to kind of put into words some of the modern problems that we might face and to be honest even in a time where hopelessness is a mainstream idea now I really reading this book get a sense of hope to be honest because I went full circle with this story uh with you know shackleton's Voyage is kind of the the epitome of the Successful Failure right you really look back at this book and you think all right you know none of this stuff is really complicated you know what did Shackleton do he the the guy who was you know suicidal he put him on cooking duty and told him to put put his talents to good use and start making some food for the guy who was a little bit narcissistic he he was able to play up to his Grand intellect right and get him to do things that uh other people weren't able to do he kept people busy during times of Crisis he was a decisive leader he was in command he was every bit of all of these leadership manuals and self-help books that we read and if you look at that and if you read the book I'm sure many of you would say this is not that impressive like this guy just did everything right you know which is you know is kind of impressive itself but to be honest he he's not worthy of a lot of the the grandio language that we used to describe shackleton's voyage and I would say I agreed with that up until the very last page of this book where I started off having a good respect for Shackleton and what he did because I had read the story before I was very familiar with uh you know a lot of the the Age of Exploration kind of things and then I read the book and started thinking oh okay you know this is this is good you know this is I can see what shackleton's trying to do here in this situation to keep people moving forward and then you get to the end of the book and then everything that the the gravity of what had just happened just comes crashing down where you realize they really did this and this is really really impressive and for those people who don't really understand why this story has so much weight uh like here in my notes I mentioned that this to me has kind of the flavor of classic movies for instance I have personally uh taken a lot of people to see very classic movies like uh Casablanca The Treasure of Sierra Madre citizen Cain even some slightly more modern ones like Lawrence of Arabia dos boot right and I can't tell you how many people I have taken to see these movies or or watch these movies with and they are just like you know me it's there's no like emotional attachment to seeing you know what a lot of people think are these great films now I'm certainly no film critic myself but in our modern world we see a lot of movies and we consume a lot of content right and when you watch Citizen Kane after seeing a lot of more modern movies you think okay this movie is really boring and there's nothing to this this is nothing nothing special it's only afterwards do you have to explain to people no no no no no th this movie is special because this is the first time this was done in film right Casablanca same way a lot of people may see that and say oh well this is not really that impressive but it's only when you explain to them oh no this is the first time in film where we see the ending be a Double Bluff right that people sort of understand oh okay that's that's why this movie is uh famous right it's the same thing with shackleton's story like they see what Shackleton did and they say oh this isn't that impressive until they realize hey this is really the first time that a commander has done these things Shackleton knew even though it was standard at the time for leadership to originate at the end of a pistol Shackleton knew that was no use and he had to shift a lot of the cultural expectations of the time to get stuff done I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt at least five people during this Voyage would have been shot by any other Commander for their in ordination but Shackleton was able to not just take that in subordination and basically traces of mutiny and turn that into something productive but he was also able to not let that infect the other crew and that is just something that is is really really hard to convey how he did that and I'm still in Mystery in some in some regards of how he did that this is why I think you know many of the Leadership Lessons found in you know military courses or in military schools and stuff like that it comes from this idea right it comes from this situation Shackleton being Furious that the cook had set Choice cuts of meat aside for him and the fact that the cook had uh tried to uh make his food better than the rest of the crew and Shackleton being furious at that is a complete and utter Oddity for the time period because it was expected that the captain of the ship the the officers of the ship get better food than the crew but once they were stranded but once they were stranded the whole situation took a whole different path right Shackleton and his officers ate the same thing as everybody else because they were in a survival situation which I honestly don't think would have happened with anyone else but Shackleton which is again pointing to why this story is so interesting so to sort of wrap things up and and keep things in our modern perspective right I think that looking at ageold Century old stories of survival from the age of Antarctic exploration it may not seem like it has a whole lot of bearing on today's life like I I did not really go into this thinking that this would be anything more than an entertaining read that we might be able to cherry-pick some lessons from and that's kind of what we did but to be honest we're coming into 2024 and I don't think that anyone on Earth thinks this year is going to be easy by any stretch of the imagination and it's really good to on the one hand look back in time and realize how Timeless a lot of the issues that we're going to have are and also how unremarkable some of these people are it turns out even though you know Shackleton himself may be put up on a pedestal a lot of times it turns out that entirely unre remarkable men did some very remarkable things and in the end it turns out that completely ordinary men were not ordinary by any stretch of the imagination I think that gives a lot of hope for us moving into what we know is going to be a very stressful and difficult time that we always have the chance to do better and we always have the chance to Buck up and do the right thing especially in times of hardship looking back in time to seemingly unrelated stories of survival and hardship really gives us the chance to realize that we have a lot more power in ourselves than we think we do and we can absolutely tackle any problem that we set our mind to in an age of hopelessness stories like this can help us make perseverance a trend and that is why I really enjoyed reading this book I myself am never going to get stranded on an ice flow in Antarctica but I will most certainly be facing a lot of the personality issues the morale problems and just the utter stress of living in the near future and I'm betting that a lot of you will be going through the same thing if you aren't already so it's really good to see that even 100 years ago a lot of the personality issues that we're running through the the stress of working with the community in a time of hardship the these problems are not new and uh it's really good to know that it is possible to go forward and do good things even if it seems like all hope hope is lost so I think there is no better way than to start off 2024 with an air of hope hope that we can change things for the better and if that's not possible then maybe we can have the hope that we can all endure together whatever the future might bring so thank you all for listening and we will see you next time and as always fight in the shade