Shackleton's Endurance

The men and crew of the Endurance were a strange picking out of hundreds, if you ask me. A motley crew of twenty-seven men, a wide mix of artisans, scientists, and seamen. Their leader, Sir Ernest Shackleton, was the only man keeping them from death. It isn’t flattery when people say that without The Boss, it is very possible that not all of the men would have made it back to England alive. The lack of casualties is astounding. The Irishman was an explorer at heart, a man whose soul seemed to be bound to the Antarctic. A stern looking man, he was well known for betraying his appearances and being kind-hearted and modest, putting the lives of his men before his own. This is evident with Shackleton’s rigged pulling of straws, that granted sleeping bags to the seamen, rather than

The second in command was Frank Wild, and the Captain of the Endurance, Frank Worsley. Tom Crean had been to the Antarctic before with Shackleton, and the Irishman proudly wore Britain’s Polar Medal. A good friend of Shackletons, he had also served under Captain Scott, who had the second place finish to the South Pole. It was Crean who had found Scott’s lifeless

Out of these hundreds of possibilities, Shackleton narrowed it down to these twenty-seven men, and if you ask me, he did it well. The fact that all of these men survived proves that above everything else. The only thing that concerns me was Shackleton’s gallant act of allowing Perce Blackborow to remain on board. Stowaways are, in most cases at least, thrown overboard. It’s cocky, rude, and it truly is a hit at Shackleton to decide that no, he made the wrong decision, I should be on this crew. In the case that they had thrown him overboard, that’s one less mouth to feed, one less body to clothe, one less person to care for and worry over. The rest of the men would have been better off without