South / Ernest Shackleton

   Polar exploration, will you ever cease to amaze me? PROBABLY NOT.

   I have almost too many feeling about this book to actually write about it. It's composed of Shackleton's recollections and journals/logbooks/etc, as well as excerpts from the crew's logs and diaries. That description makes it sound pretty boring, probably, and while some parts (such as lengthy descriptions of daily ice conditions) may not be everyone's cup of tea they are certainly mine. I could listen to polar explorers talk about ice all day. Ice floes? Ice bergs? Sea ice? Glaciers? Don't matter, I do not tire of ice. Unless the ice is in my real life, because ugh winter.

SO MUCH ICE TO TELL ME ABOUT

   SO: in case you do not know the general story of the Endurance expedition, here it is: Shackleton sets out for Antartica with a ship full of men and dogs with the intended goal of crossing the continent from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea. The Weddell Sea is notoriously bad sailing (which is why the main station in Antarctica other than the one at South Pole is at McMurdo Sound), and alas, the Endurance was caught in sea-ice and crushed.

   The portion of the book describing the Endurance being locked into ice and slowly crushed then ultimately abandoned when it sank was so difficult for me to read that I had to take long breaks from reading. I was very emotional about that ship.

   So the ship sinks and Shackleton and the men are left on the ice with a couple of lifeboats, some tents, as many supplies as they could rescue, and the dogs. SO begins a long trek/float/sail/wait for good conditions to trek/float/sail to Elephant Island, a desolate bit of rock in some of the worst sea in the world. From there, Shackleton and a select few make their way to an island with a whaling station on it, but there is definitely rough sea and briny drinking water and glacier crossing to deal with before they can get help and EVEN THEN: its months and many attempts before they can get back to the blokes on Elephant Island and rescue them. NONE OF WHICH HAD PERISHED (unless you count their dogs which were all eaten because meat is meat when you are stranded in Antarctica).

   AND IT DOESN'T STOP THERE because if you're going to cross Antarctica you need some peeps over on the other side to pick you up when you are done and to depot some supplies. The Ross Sea party also had a rough go of it, and suffered fatalities. It's hard and sad to read, especially since these men received (and still receive) much less acknowledgement than the Weddell Sea party.

   And then after all of this, they get home during WWI and some of them just hop right into the fighting after years living on seal meat in dismal conditions.

it was v cold

   Basically: I want everyone in the world to read this book and I want to go to Antarctica and I need to read more about the Age of Exploration because I'll never know enough.

   p.s. do yourself a favour and google Frank Hurley's photos from all the expeditions he took to Antarctica as well as from WWI.