Page 96. Watch the Lecture. Part D. LISTEN FOR DETAILS

Unit 10

page 96

watch the lecture

part D: listen for details

when we think of the great explorers, we typically remember them for achieving their goals, right?

but today I’m gonna tell you the story of Sir Ernest Shackleton and his trip to Antarctica.

Now, his goal was to lead the first group to cross Antarctica on foot; however, you never reach this goal.

In fact everything went terribly wrong; so why do we remember Shackleton?

because of the great leadership he showed during the trip.

Shackleton left England in 1914 on the ship the endurance; yet a crew of 28 men including the ships officers and sailors and some scientists who came along to do research.

in January 1915, they entered the Antarctic Circle; however, it was colder than normal and the oceans was full of ice and the endurance soon became stuck.

Shackleton and his crew realize they have to wait 10 months until November, which is springtime and Arctic Circle for the ice to melt.

So, there they lived on the ship stuck in the ice and waiting for spring.

Shackleton who was called the boss by his men kept the morals up by keeping them busy.

now in those days, ships officers and scientists didn’t usually interact with sailors; the officers and scientists usually got better food and lived in better conditions.

But Shackleton needed everyone to work as a team and not as individuals; so, everyone shared the jobs on the ship.

the officers and scientists labor right beside the sailors, cleaning the floors; and the sailors help of the science experiments.

everyone ate the same food together at the same table; consequently men all became friends and learn to work together.

over the long winter as the ship floated with the ice, the ice began to crush the ship.

the crew could hear the awful sound of the wood bending and breaking as the ice closed in.

and so in October 1915 Shackleton ordered everyone to move off the ship and onto the ice.

for nearly a month they lived on the ice, next to the dying ship watching it slowly crushed.

then on November 21, 1915 with Shackleton’s cry of she’s going boys, the men watched horrified as the endurance came apart and sank into the water; but even when everything seemed hopeless, Shackleton didn’t give up.

he promised his men that if they work hard and stay together, they would get home.

Now at this point Shackleton’s leadership style was very important to the survival of the crew; because of the way he treated the men, treating each man with respect, the crew became extremely loyal.

they believe at him; if Shackleton believe they would get home, well, the men believed it too.

with the arrival of summer in March 1916, the ice they have been living on, began to melt.

at this point Shackleton and his men knew that they had to get to land.

They’re floated close enough to see elephant Island, small rocky island about 100 miles off in the distance.

so in April Shackleton and the crew guided to three small boats they had saved from the ship; and after seven days of rough water and freezing temperatures, they finally made it to elephant Island.

it’d been 467 days, more than a year since the man had stood on land; however, they still have absolutely no hope of rescue; no one knew where they were.

at this point, Shackleton made his riskiest decision yet; he decided to take one of the small boats and sail back to a whaling station on South Georgia, an Island about 800 miles away and get help.

He left elephant Island with five men promising to return and rescue the others; after 17 days of sailing through some of the roughest waters in the world, Shackleton the five men finally made at the South Georgia amazingly.

However, they still had to walk for 36 hours over ice covered mountains to reach the whaling station, so their job wasn’t done. when they walked inside as the story goes, the station manager took one look at these guys and said “who are you?”.

it’d been so long that everyone thought Shackleton and his crew were dead, over the next four months Shackleton tried three times to rescue the men back on elephant Island, but the sea was still full of ice and the ships couldn’t make it.

meanwhile the men on elephant Island were surviving but it started to lose hope.

they began to think that Shackleton had never made it to South Georgia and that they be stuck in Antarctica forever.

then on August 30, 1916 nearly 2 years after their trip had begun, the men saw a ship approaching the distance; they ran to the beach waving and shouting.

It was Shackleton coming to rescue them; Shackleton from the ship, counted them on shore and cried with happiness when he saw that they had all survived; he had kept his promise to them.

for this, Shackleton is credited as one of the great heroes of the time; not for reaching his original goal, but for leading his men through some of the worst conditions in the world and keeping his promise to them, to bring them home alive.