Adventure, shipwreck, storms and survival on the high seas.
I found this hugely inspirational book at a time when we need ever more resilience to overcome adversity and courage to persevere in the most difficult of circumstances. At times, it’s hard to imagine just what incredible feats of courage they displayed with persistence, patience, determination, and the indefatigable will to never give up when all hope seems lost.
It makes our trivial lives paltry in comparison to the challenges that they face. Personally, when I have something that I considered to be difficult, I reflect on what is Ernest Shackleton would’ve said to his men and it puts everything in perspective this is about the calm patients to prepare for the unexpected, not be thrown when things don’t work out as you plan and try try and try again to find a solution to what appears to be an impossible and unsolvable problem. This is true inspiring leadership at its finest.
ENDURANCE is the story of one of the most astonishing feats of exploration and human courage ever recorded. In 1914 Sir Ernest Shackleton and a crew of 27 men set sail for the South Atlantic on board a ship called the Endurance. The object of the expedition was to cross the Antarctic overland. In October 1915, still half a continent away from their intended base, the ship was trapped, then crushed in ice.
For five months Shackleton and his men, drifting on ice packs, were castaways on one of the most savage regions of the world. This utterly gripping book, based on first-hand accounts of crew members and interviews with survivors, describes how the men survived, how they lived together in camps on the ice for 17 months until they reached land, how they were attacked by sea leopards, the diseases which they developed, and the indefatigability of the men and their lasting civility towards one another in the most adverse conditions conceivable.