Travel to Antarctica

Shackleton's Forgotten Men: The Untold Tale of an Antarctic Tragedy

Format: Hardcover
Author: Lennard Bickel
ReleaseDate: 22 February, 2000
Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press
Rating:

The heros about whom no movie has been made
This book chronicles the story of the party who was to lay Shackleton's supply depots for his cross-Antarctic journey, a journey he never made. Too many books and movies about Shackleton's ill-fated Endurance expidition end with Shackleton reaching South Georgia Island and returning to rescue his crew of Endurance. These men in many ways had an even harder task than Shackleton's party. They not only had responsibility for their own well-being, but (as far as they knew) Shackleton's as well. This book is a riviting account of their harrowing journey and what Shackleton found when he went back for THEM after rescuing his own crew. This book will make all other accounts of Shackleton's Endurance expidition seem incomplete.

The Other Side of Endurance
Here as on the Endurance disaster struck at the very beginning. The other half of Ernest Shackleton's Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914-15 started from McMurdo Sound on the Ross Sea and laid supply depots across the Ross Ice Shelf for Shackleton and his team to use as they crossed the continent from the Weddell Sea. The Ross Sea party's ship was blown out to sea, marooning the men for two years with little more than the clothes they stood up in. Fortunately, the lavishly equipped Scott Expedition had departed in a hurry four years before and left a surprising amount of stuff behind. Hard-headed Aeneas Mackintosh and his men carried out their task despite their own precarious position, laying depots that would never be used. The cost was the lives of three men, including Captain Mackintosh himself.

The loss of the ship was something no one could have prevented, but the deaths were fundamentally due to inexperienced leadership, which ultimately went back to Shackleton, who left ambiguous orders about who would be commander: Mackintosh, captain of the ship but with only one short sledging journey to his credit, or Ernest Joyce, who had gone south with Scott on the Discovery, with Shackleton on the Nimrod, and had selected dogs for Douglas Mawson. The stubborn Mackintosh insisted that final decisions were his alone. His refusal to heed Joyce's advice led directly to the death of three-quarters of their dogs by the end of the first sledging season. The Expedition never fully recovered.

The author doesn't have the English language quite under control, particularly his verbs. "Men's legs burying deep in the drift"? I blame his copy editor.

Unbelievable endurance
His ship, the Endurance, becomes trapped in the ice and is eventually crushed. Many people know of Ernest Shackleton's tragic Antartic expedition. Shackleton and his men, make there way back to civilization through Shackleton's efforts. However, not many people know about the other group of men involved in that same expedition.

On the other side of Antartica, on the Great Ross Ice Shelf, a group of ten men sail and set up camp. Their task is to set up a number of supply depots for Shackleton's team. Once they cross the South Pole, the team would be abel to resupply at the depots established by this other team of men.

Unfortunately, their ship is lost and they are trapped. The fate of the Endurance is unknown to them and they struggle to complete there assigned tasks. It is a tale is suffering and incredible human endurance.

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