We’ve crested the mid-point of our Siblings’ Book Club list for 2020. While it may have been wise to save this book for the colder months, I for one was happy to chip away at this most incredible of adventure stories little by little through the hot Midwestern summer.

This true tale of survival follows captain Ernest Shackleton and his 27-man crew through their failed plan to cross the Antarctic on foot. When their ship, the Endurance, gets locked in the ice of the Antarctic Sea, the men are forced to winter in the world’s most inhospitable region, upon the ice floes of the Weddell Sea. This, however, is only the beginning of their woes, for the ice eventually destroys and sinks their ship, and they are forced to endure the harsh Antarctic winter in what they dub “Ocean Camp.”

After enduring that season, they realize that the ice is slowly breaking loose. They’ve eaten their dogs and have attempted to fill their stores with seal meat, and they’ve reached the desperate point where the 28 men are forced to drag their three life boats in search of land. They make home on another floe dubbed “Patience Camp”, but then are forced to the boats and the open sea once more. After enduring a frightfully long, cold, and wet journey, they finally reach Elephant Island where they must endure yet another untold length of time before possible rescue.

All hope for rescue is placed in the hands of Ernest Shackleton and five others who take a single lifeboat and brave 800 miles of the most dangerous seas on Earth to reach the tiny point of land from which they had sailed eighteen months prior, the whaling island of South Georgia. But when their tiny boat miraculously lands on one side of the island, the rudder breaks against the rocks, forcing the mostly-starved and exhausted men to cross its rugged, icy peaks on foot in order to reach the whaling station on the opposite side of the island. Shackleton takes two men from the crew with him for this frightful, final push. When they finally view the whaling station from a mountain peak and endure a last swim down a waterfall, they stumble into camp filthy and gaunt, much to the astonishment of all who see them. Civilization at last!

Astonishingly, after twenty-two months of beings stranded in the world’s most inhospitable land (and seas), all 28 men survive the ordeal, they “endure” if you will, to make the journey back to a world torn apart by WWI. Interestingly enough, most of those men joined the war efforts upon their return and several died soon after.

I’ve read Shackleton’s own account of this epic survival tale, South: The Endurance Expedition, so I had a inkling of what to expect. Because I love the story so much, I wasn’t too worried about reading the same-old, same-old, yet I also wasn’t quite sure how different the two would be.

I was happy to find that Lansing’s book offers a slightly more birds-eye view than does Shackleton’s own, which is to be expected. After all, Lansing had the benefit of time to peruse journals from all the men who kept them, to interview the men still living, and to organize patiently his material in a manner most fitting and most entertaining.

Shackleton, on the other hand, was unabashedly a man on a mission of wealth and fame. Even when departing camp to make the treacherous trek across the frozen mountains, he instructed Hurley (if I recall correctly) to manage the lecture circuit in the U.S. to make sure the world knew what had happened there. Despite busying himself with his own recovery, the War, his lectures and travels, Shackleton managed to pen and publish his book before three years had passed. He wrote mainly from his own records and memories, though he also borrowed from the journals of others.

I make these comparisons because I feel that Shackleton’s book drags a bit in places, so focused as he was on the technical aspects and the navigational measurements. Lansing’s book, however, gives the adventure reader what he craves most, the thought processes of the men who endured the impossible. For that reason, I’d vote Lansing’s book a better read than Shackleton’s, though I loved them both.

One thing that surprised me, however, about Lansing’s book was its abrupt ending. While magazine articles and first installments of trilogies can leave the reader wanting more, non-fiction epics of 300 pages or more should scratch every itch. By the end of Lansing’s book, I wanted more: What happened to the men afterwards? On what foods did they eventually gorge themselves? Whatever happened to the Ross Sea Party?

I guess it was this last question that reminded me of that other great difference between the two books. Whereas Lansing focused solely on the Endurance (as the title proclaims), Shackleton focused on the venture entirely, including 111 pages about the Ross Sea Party and two Appendices. That Shackleton’s account was less emotional is true, but let no one accuse him of not being thorough!

I’m certain to read Endurance again someday in the future. It sits up there with my all-time favorite book, another tale of survival, Alive! by Piers Paul Read. All of these books are such comforting reminders of human capability through the most difficult of times, and they give me a better perspective of even this, the COVID-19 phase.

©2020 E.T.