Old-School Grit:
Lessons from History on Willpower,
Tenacity,
and Resilience (Live a Disciplined Life Book 13)
Written by
Pete Hollins
Narrated by Russell Newton.
Few stories of resilience are as
amazing as that of the British
Endurance Expedition,
launched in 1914.
The mission was to cross the Antarctic
on foot,
but sadly,
this lofty goal was never to be
achieved.
Instead,
the Endurance mission took a completely
different shape - the ship,
aptly named Endurance,
got trapped in thick sheet ice on its
journey out.
The crew of Endurance was stranded for
months in the ice as they battled
abject cold,
hunger,
desperation,
and even insanity.
The expedition leader,
Ernest Shackleton,
first led his men to abandon the
trapped ship to the safety of nearby
Elephant Island,
and after that,
he bravely left his crew to seek help.
Because of his continued courage and
discipline,
he managed to save that crew,
even though everything else was lost.
The ship lay at the bottom of the ocean
for 107 years before it was
rediscovered recently in March 2022.
As the ghost of this vessel was brought
back to the surface,
historians were again reminded of
Ernest Shackleton and his crew.
But who was Shackleton,
and what exactly happened on the
expedition?
There were actually two ships – one
called the Ross Sea Party on the ship
Aurora that would drop supplies for the
other,
the Endurance.
On this ship were 69 dogs,
a tomcat,
27 men,
and one ship stowaway,
who was later put to work as a steward.
The expedition leader was Shackleton,
who saw the voyage as a way to make a
name for himself by establishing a base
on the Weddell sea coast.
Setting out in August,
the ship was trapped in thick sheet ice
in the Wendell Sea by December that
year,
and there was nothing the crew could do
to free her.
Though they could move the vessel for a
little while,
eventually the ice surrounded them so
they could not budge either forward or
backward.
As the ice creaked and shifted,
it took the ship with it,
slowly drifting the men off course and
crushing the hull bit by bit.
They had been within only a day’s
reach of their destination,
but with every day spent trapped,
they drifted further away.
For ten long months,
the crew sat on the trapped ship,
waiting out the winter.
One of the ship’s doctors,
Alexander Macklin,
later wrote that Shackleton,
“did not rage at all,
or show outwardly the slightest sign of
disappointment;
he told us simply and calmly that we
must winter in the Pack;
explained its dangers and
possibilities;
never lost his optimism and prepared
for winter."
For months,
Shackleton tried to lead his men
through the perilous Antarctic ice
packs on dwindling provisions and scant
morale.
But he could not ignore the writing on
the wall – they were going nowhere
and running out of provisions.
As seasoned sailors know,
“What the ice gets,
the ice keeps."
Waiting patiently was a recipe for
certain death.
Shackleton eventually ordered the crew
to abandon ship,
and in good time too,
since it sank shortly afterwards –
around 28 days later.
The team escaped with their lives on
just 3 lifeboats.
They made difficult decisions about
which of the barest essentials to take,
discarding everything else.
Most of the smaller dogs and the cat
were shot,
and the rest of their possessions were
left behind to go down with the ship.
It was gut-wrenching,
but the ordeal was just getting started.
Try to imagine it - these 6 men braved
the frozen wilderness in a small boat
roughly 7m or 22 feet long and pressed
on in this way for 800 miles,
heading for the whaling stations they
knew they’d find in South Georgia.
It’s hard for people to understand
the suffering they would have endured -
battered by gale force winds and near
constant freezing rain,
the men huddled in groups,
riddled with seasickness,
wondering which giant ice cap would
capsize the boat in an instant and kill
them all... Shackleton even wrote later
in his memoirs that they once
encountered a tidal wave so enormous
that he originally mistook it for the
sky.
Later,
in his book South!,
Shackleton recounts,
“Huge blocks of ice,
weighing many tons,
were lifted into the air and tossed
aside as other masses rose beneath them.
We were helpless intruders in a strange
world,
our lives dependent upon the play of
grim elementary forces that made a mock
of our puny efforts."
It's hard to imagine that these were
men who had already gone through one
unthinkable trial and had started this
second journey cold,
miserable,
hungry,
and ill.
The crew had already lived for months
trapped on board the Endurance in the
ice floes.
And now they were pitted against the
merciless elements,
each of them likely resigned to the
fact that they would die.
It was later reported that half the men
on the boats were already mad,
and some were viciously ill with
dysentery.
Some were chronically sleep-deprived,
not having rested for 80 hours or so.
Finally,
exhausted and barely holding things
together,
they reached the uninhabited Elephant
Island.
When they set foot on that dry land,
it had been a staggering 497 days since
the Endurance first set sail.
Shackleton’s second-in-command,
Frank Wild,
led the team to create a makeshift
shelter out of two upturned lifeboats.
The third boat was their last hope.
Giving himself ten days to recover and
prepare,
Shackleton then left to seek help.
He took with him five other men and set
sail on the third lifeboat named
“James Caird."
This time,
they knew what to expect.
They’d wake every morning to beat the
ice out of the sails and bail freezing
water from the boat before pushing on.
The punishing winds howled and tossed
the fragile boat on the open seas,
and the men,
with their last splinters of hope
barely intact,
somehow found it in them to keep rowing
until they reached their destination.
After 17 further days of fighting to
survive,
they landed on the shores of South
Georgia.
The men rested briefly before the
marathon hike of 36 hours across the
island,
finally finding Stromness Whaling
station.
It took beating out a path that no
human had walked before,
over mountain peaks and through icy
terrain and frozen cliffs,
but they did it – to the astonishment
of those at the whaling station.
Can you imagine the sight of these
three men turning up in the middle of
nowhere?
After nearly two years of suffering and
desperation,
they had long,
stringy beards,
ruined clothing,
and gaunt faces.
Thoralf Sørlle,
the station manager,
was so shocked at the sight of them
that he turned and wept when Shackleton
explained what had happened.
From there,
Shackleton could arrange for a rescue
ship to fetch the 22 sailors that still
remained on Elephant Island.
Again,
this was a story of one disaster after
another.
The first ship that Shackleton launched
ran out of fuel and was forced to turn
back.
A vessel offered by Uruguay made it to
within 100 miles of Elephant Island
before ice packs forced it to give up
and return.
It took several more attempts,
but eventually the Chilean government
agreed to lend him a small tugboat,
called Yelcho.
Heading back,
Shackleton must have secretly feared
the worst,
wondering about the men he’d left
behind.
He had taken a full 128 days to return
to them with help.
As he approached,
he noticed a smoke signal emerging from
the makeshift shelter,
and soon the men emerged,
calling to him – all of them had made
it.
In the meantime,
Frank Wild had been tasked with keeping
spirits up on the desolate Island
wasteland.
Every single morning,
he would instruct the crew to prepare
their belongings and get ready,
since Shackleton might return any day
now.
Despite how despondent and despairing
the crew felt,
Wild kept it up.
Many of the men had utterly given up
and had resigned themselves to their
fate,
rather than keep clinging to hope.
Their daily life was one of misery and
privation,
and they had little to do but ruminate
on their doomed fate and boil up seal
bones for nourishment.
But that fateful morning on day 128,
Shackleton really did return,
and the crew was packed and ready,
not quite believing that their
nightmare was finally coming to an end.
The crew all made it back to England,
and years later,
all were still alive and well.
Are you wondering what happened to the
other ship,
the Aurora?
Sadly,
this ship and its crew were essentially
left to fend for themselves and were
stranded.
The commander of the ship and two other
crew members perished,
despite faithfully fulfilling their
task of delivering food and supplies
needed by the Endurance.
The plan was to meet the Endurance in
the Ross Sea,
south of New Zealand,
bringing supplies.
So,
although Shackleton’s tale of
endurance and daring rescue was the
most compelling story to emerge from
these events,
the fact is that none of the original
aims of the expedition were met – in
fact,
the Antarctic was only explored on foot
decades later,
in the 1950s by Sir Vivian Fuchs.
Whatever happened to Shackleton?
Well,
he never did reach the South Pole or
cross the Antarctic on foot,
but he did attempt another expedition
years later,
with many of the same crew he had been
with on the Endurance.
They noted that he was never the same
again.
In fact,
Shackleton died at just 47 years of age
of a heart attack.
Granted,
the days of high adventure and
fantastic explorations to the poles
seem like they belong to a bygone era,
but the story of the Endurance and her
crew still captures hearts and minds
today.
People continue to be astonished at
just how much Shackleton and his men
must have endured – how on earth
could they have survived all that?
Take a look at any of the photographs
of the crew throughout their doomed
expedition and you cannot help but feel
awe at the black and white faces
peering back out at you.
The ship was a small,
wooden one with canvas sails,
and the men aboard it were working with
what we’d now consider rudimentary
instruments.
The men had,
in total,
spent years battling despair,
insanity,
starvation,
exhaustion,
and illness – all in a frighteningly
hostile landscape where temperatures
averaged roughly -66 F (-54 C).
Shackleton and his crew were forever
considered impressive proof of the
extent to which the human spirit can
endure and prevail.
Shackleton wrote a book about his
experiences that gives a peek into his
mind and allows us to guess at what it
must have been like out there in the
Antarctic wilderness - “When I look
back at those days I have no doubt that
Providence guided us,
not only across those snowfields,
but across the storm-white sea that
separated Elephant Island from our
landing-place on South Georgia.
I know that during that long and
racking march of thirty-six hours over
the unnamed mountains and glaciers of
South Georgia it seemed to me often
that we were four,
not three.
I said nothing to my companions on the
point,
but afterwards Worsley said to me,
‘Boss,
I had a curious feeling on the march
that there was another person with
us.’ Crean confessed to the same idea.
One feels ‘the dearth of human words,
the roughness of mortal speech’ in
trying to describe things intangible,
but a record of our journeys would be
incomplete without a reference to a
subject very near to our hearts."
Who was the fourth person on the
journey with them?
Shackleton knows that he can never
fully express what he experienced out
there,
but we can conjecture.
Perhaps he felt a divine spirit guiding
and protecting him.
Perhaps it was his own sense of hope
and the fearsome refusal to give up and
let go of his life.
Perhaps it was simply raw human
survival instinct,
wordless and unconscious.
Many of the men did give up.
Shackleton was a flawed man,
who had certainly been criticized for
his leadership skills over the course
of his career,
but one thing that people could agree
on was that he took his duty to inspire
hope and courage in his crew very
seriously.
Even though he was doubtless tormented
internally,
he never permitted himself to despair
openly to the others.
Besides his clear faith in something
greater than himself (“We had seen
God in His splendors,
heard the text that Nature renders.
We had reached the naked soul of man”
– Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage),
he also was a practical man.
He speaks about the importance of
grounding one’s daily life in
routine,
about humility,
and about simply getting on with what
must be done,
one way or another.
He remarked once,
after his team had already endured
countless months of sickness and
starvation,
the power of the little,
everyday things - “I heard one man
say,
"Cook,
I like my tea strong."
Another joined in,
"Cook,
I like mine weak."
It was pleasant to know that their
minds were untroubled,
but I thought the time opportune to
mention that the tea would be the same
for all hands and that we would be
fortunate if two months later we had
any tea at all.
It occurred to me at the time that the
incident had psychological interest.
Here were men,
their home crushed,
the camp pitched on the unstable floes,
and their chance of reaching safety
apparently remote,
calmly attending to the details of
existence and giving their attention to
such trifles as the strength of a brew
of tea."
Brave hope and the will to survive are
very grand endeavors – but they often
play out in mundane ways.
If we can focus on what is in front of
us,
no matter how small,
we can find a kind of dignity in them.
No matter how dire the situation is,
we can take solace in ritual,
in doing what little we can,
and in sticking with routines – even
if we don’t quite have faith in them
anymore.
Finally,
perhaps the most noteworthy of
Shackleton’s attitudes was his
seeming unwillingness to think about
defeat even as a possibility.
Like many deeply devoted and ambitious
people,
Shackleton simply did not allow himself
to give up.
“Difficulties,” he claimed,
“are just things to overcome."
No matter the size of the difficulty,
or how frequent they are,
they were never a reason to stop,
give up,
or turn back.
They were simply things that needed to
be gone around – speed bumps rather
than roadblocks that forever close off
the path.
If we can replicate make this subtle
shift in perspective,
we allow ourselves to stay proactive
and ask – how can I get around this?
If we assume that we will do everything
we humanly can do to get around it,
it simply becomes a matter of how.
“Just when things looked their worst,
they changed for the best.
I have marveled often at the thin line
that divides success from failure and
the sudden turn that leads from
apparently certain disaster to
comparative safety."
If you genuinely think this way about
life,
then no situation is so dire or so
hopeless that it cannot one day turn
completely and become something new.
Hope,
then,
is like keeping your belongings packed
and ready so that,
when better things come,
you are ready and waiting to seize them.
Real life example.
Not many of us will ever endure the
kind of suffering Shackleton and his
men did,
but we may well face other challenges,
like major illness,
poverty,
or natural disasters.
In more recent history,
there are plenty of examples of people
rising to extreme challenges,
like the brave firefighters who worked
tirelessly to retrieve survivors from
the rubble of the bombing of the world
Trade Center.
They did precisely what Shackleton did;
they dug deep and allowed the magnitude
of their task to sober them and inspire
them,
then they refused to give up as they
did what needed to be done.
Shackleton’s men were forced to find
out what they were really made of.
Senator John Kerry hints at the same
phenomenon when he remarked of the 9/11
attacks,
“It was the worst day we have ever
seen,
but it brought out the best in all of
us."
Shackleton’s lessons -
•Find purpose.
Seek a deeper meaning and significance
in your life,
and,
if it strengthens you,
anchor yourself in religion or
spirituality.
Shackleton never felt alone during his
most arduous challenges,
and that’s because he was a man of
faith.
•When times are challenging,
keep sane and even-keeled by engrossing
yourself in the details of day to day
life.
Keep a routine,
look after the basics of life,
and if need be,
find relieving distractions when things
get especially difficult.
•Finally,
don’t give up.
When you encounter a challenge,
reframe the way you look at it - it’s
not the end.
Difficulties are not a sign that your
journey is over,
just that the route has changed.
Difficulties are just things to
overcome.
If you have hope,
then you’ll be prepared and ready to
grasp opportunity when it does finally
come your way.
This has been
Old-School Grit:
Lessons from History on Willpower,
Tenacity,
and Resilience (Live a Disciplined Life Book 13) Written by
Pete Hollins
Narrated by Russell Newton.