Endurance - Documentary on Ernest Shackleton

[UTH]

Quite keen to watch this, although funny how the Guardian can put out two reviews in two days with rather different star ratings:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/oct/12/endur...

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/oct/13/endur...

[DeejRC]

Shackleton is, was and always will be one of my ultimate all time heroes. Legend of a man.

[milesgiles]

Read the book a few years ago will watch

[gt40steve]

DeejRC said:

Shackleton is, was and always will be one of my ultimate all time heroes. Legend of a man.

Well said & seconded. Looking forward to the film.

[Chauffard]

I've read the story of the expedition and like everyone else Shackleton has flaws, his leadership skills cannot be denied but unlike his rival Scott, he tended to minimise the contributions of others in ensuring the crew's survival after the Endurance sank, like McNish the carpenter, who Shackleton shamefully left off the list of crew members who would later recieve the Polar Medal.

[gt40steve]

The other point of view is that McNish had been a trouble maker & bad influence. I understand Shackleton deliberately took him on the James Caird rescue attempt rather than leave him with the bulk of the crew on Elephant Island, where Shackleton feared he may cause trouble.

We must acknowledge McNishs work on the James Caird preparing her for that epic voyage though. If that voyage had failed it would have been the end for everyone.

[coppice]

My wife will enjoy this .She gives talks on Shackleton ,which, as her roadie , I have heard many times but the story is still almost incredible. At one of her talks earlier this year , in Whitby , an elderly lady came up to us at the end and told us that one of her mothers' cousins had been on the crew of the Endurance . That gave us a tingle down the spine .

Joanne fulfilled a long ambition by going to Antarctica this year and saw Elephant Island etc- and the great man's south facing grave on South Georgia. From a Zodiac boat , because of bird flu but perhaps that was the best way to see it ?

[2xChevrons]

gt40steve said:

The other point of view is that McNish had been a trouble maker & bad influence. I understand Shackleton deliberately took him on the James Caird rescue attempt rather than leave him with the bulk of the crew on Elephant Island, where Shackleton feared he may cause trouble.

We must acknowledge McNishs work on the James Caird preparing her for that epic voyage though. If that voyage had failed it would have been the end for everyone.

McNish had scarcely been a 'troublemaker' - tensions flared between McNish and Shackleton during the attempt to march across the ice to one of the islands off the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, in preparation for which Shackleton had ordered non-essential equipment discarded and the least useful animals shot, which infamously included McNish's cat. As well as this personal reason to dislike the plan, McNish had disagreed with Shackleton's plan before the final loss of the Endurance, and had instead suggested that he could build a yawl out of the ship's wreckage that could take the entire party to safety by sea; a plan that Shackleton turned down and then ceased to be an option once the wreckage was finally lost under the ice.

McNish wasn't the only one to disagree with plan 'The Boss' came up with - Frank Worsley also didn't think it was feasible as his navigation calculations indicated that the ice was moving against their desired direction almost as fast as a party could feasibly march while towing boats and gear on sledges.

The attempted march was even slower than predicted, due to the uneven and ridge-strewn ice conditions, and rising temperatures making the ice slushy and hard to manage. After four days of barely covering one mile per day, McNish remonstrated with Shackleton that the boats were being damaged in the repeated knocks and slides as they were man-handled over the ice. That led to the famous episode of insubordination where McNish refused to work, citing the traditional maritime law that ship's articles and an officer's authority ended with the loss of a ship - which was normally true. For the Endurance expedition Shackleton had drawn up bespoke contracts which placed everyone under his command until they were released, whether they were at sea, on land, 'on or about' the ship or not.

It was a moment of pointless frustration by McNish anyway, as even if he refused to work he couldn't exactly opt-out of the party - without the rest of the group's resources he would perish. But he did have the contribution of an expert in his own field - that the boats (which, as carpenter, came under his responsibility to maintain) would be no use to anyone if they were split apart in the journey carrying them to open water.

Two days later Shackleton called a halt to the march because it was expending a huge amount of effort and risk for no real progress, thus quietly vindicating the others in party - McNish included - who had said as much before setting out.

It's an interesting leadership conondrum. McNish seemed to be falling into the natural (and very common) trap of, in times of crisis, seeing your own expertise as the solution to everything. He was clearly, demonstrably, a highly skilled naval carpenter. He had already done expert work keeping the Endurance afloat as she was slowly crushed in the ice. So the 'obvious' solution to him was more carpentry - turn the wreckage of the ship into smaller ship to escape. His concern for the condition of the boats also shows this focus.

Shackleton had to consider the morale of the wider party. He abhorred any suggestion of fatalism or passive 'take what comes' tactics. This sort of optimistic 'spirit overcomes all' attitude was both what caused many of his problems and then allowed him to extract himself and his people from the situations those problems created in the first place. To Shackleton, sitting still on the ice as it carried them north was the sort of inactivity that bred discontent, despondency, sickness and mutiny. It was putting the expedition's fate in the hands of natural forces, not Sir Ernest Shackleton. If another, more active course was open (man-hauling the boats to open water) then it had to be tried. And, while we will never know how the alternative plans would have worked, you can't argue with the results of Shackleton's plan of action - not a single man was lost and morale remained generally high.

Of course, McNish was later instrumental in adapting the James Caird for its voyage across the Southern Ocean and was then chosen by Shackleton to be part of that crew, where he and John Vincent worked themselves to the point of physical collapse.

In that context, Shackleton's refusal to put McNish forward for the Polar Medal and not even mentioning his name in 'South' (his own account of the expedition), referring to him as 'The Carpenter', just looks petty. But Shackleton demanded total loyalty from his people, in return for which he would give them his loyalty and effort several times over. That was the deal and even a momentary lapse cast you from his esteem.

[DeejRC]

We also have luxury of viewing all this from A: our sofas and B: morals, mores, ethics and, arguably more importantly, class perspectives of the early 21st C. All of which are hugely different from the time of Shackleton. Does that make any such “flaws” the correct interpretation, that his overall leaderships skills mask such flaws the correct interpretation? I am very much against such revisionist historical judgements, because frankly if you follow the logic of that line of thought it makes any and all such historical review damn nr pointless. It becomes just moral judging.
Simply state the facts and let them all speak for themselves. These guys both created problems for themselves and solved them. There wasn’t a whole lot of perfection going on, but that was largely the case for all these expeditions. In the end - take the win that they got back.