Welcome to The Big Read: Endurance! I’m excited to be tackling this book for the next couple months. Grab a blanket and a hot beverage because it’s going to get chilly.
First things first: Here’s the reading schedule. There’s a few days off for Thanksgiving — no reading on your part and no Saturday recap email from me.
As a reminder, the reading schedule is just a rough guide. You’re welcome to read the book at your own pace, whatever that may be. Just know that my weekly recaps, which will hit your inbox early Saturday morning, follow that schedule.
Any questions or comments? Don’t hesitate to let me know.
Today, I’m giving you some background and context on Shackleton and his times. Let’s jump in.
I. The Heroic Age of Exploration
“The heroic era of Antarctic exploration was ‘heroic’ because it was anachronistic before it began, its goal was as abstract as a pole, its central figures were romantic, manly and flawed, its drama was moral (for it mattered not only what was done but how it was done), and its ideal was national honour. It was an early testing-ground for the racial virtues of new nations such as Norway and Australia, and it was the site of Europe’s last gasp before it tore itself apart in the Great War.” —Tom Griffiths, Slicing the Silence: Voyaging to Antarctica
The period from 1897-1922 is often known as “the heroic age of Antarctic exploration.” In this time, there were nearly two dozen expeditions chartered from countries in the northern hemisphere — some were successful in their endeavors, but most were not.
So what made it “heroic”?
The publicly stated goals of these expeditions were always scientific, purporting to be all about bettering mankind through attaining some kind of knowledge or even just mapping the planet. Since the motives were ostensibly pure, these explorers were — and in many cases, still are — referred to as heroes. (These stated reasons were mostly malarky, which we’ll look at in the next section.)
Another aspect that gave this age the heroic moniker was the simple fact that electronic navigation and communication instruments were in their infancy. Most of these expeditions were relying on old school technology and ended up fully isolated from the rest of the world for months, sometimes years, on end.
Nobody back home had any idea what was happening for quite a long period of time: who lived or died, if the expedition achieved its goals, if the ship even still existed. In many cases, entire crews were deemed lost to the dark and the ice, only to surface again in civilization rather heroically.
The result is that this ~20-year stretch produced a disproportionate number of the most dramatic exploration and survival stories we have, including that of Ernest Shackleton and the crew of the Endurance, which sailed for Antarctica in 1914.
One final note before moving on: Though “the heroic age of exploration” largely refers to Antarctic exploration, there were also numerous attempts at the North Pole from roughly 1890-1925 and a handful of attempts at Mt. Everest’s summit. One historian would call this “the race for the three poles.”
II. An Irish Boy Who Yearned for Glory
Ernest Shackleton was born in Kilkea, Ireland on February 15, 1874, about 50 miles southwest of Dublin, on the east side of the country. (Ireland was still under British control at this point, but Shackleton would always call himself an Irishman rather than a Brit.)