A Ripping Yarn
Shackleton
The other day we watched Shackleton, a dramatized version of Ernest Shackleton's expedition to cross the Antarctic. Although a dramatized version, the script was based on the diaries and first-person accounts of the explorers and so it's very close to what actually happened.
The story didn't need any dressing up to make it more exciting - it's incredible enough as it is. I knew something about the expedition - that the ship, the Endurance, became trapped in the ice for several months before finally being crushed - but that was about all. I didn't really appreciate the true story of what happened.
The Endurance was stuck for nine months before being destroyed. Shackleton and his men, twenty-eight in all, pulled three large boats for weeks across very rough ice. The ice was drifting north and when it finally broke up around them they took to the boats, spending a week in freezing conditions before landing at Elephant Island.
Shackleton knew that the chances of rescue from Elephant Island were very slim, so he and five other men took one of the boats, improved it by raising the sides and putting a deck across it, and sailed it over 800 miles to South Georgia - a two-week journey and an incredible feat of navigation given that the seas they crossed are known to be among the worst in the world and that Frank Worsley, the navigator, was only able to get four navigation readings.
If that wasn't bad enough, the six men survived a storm at sea that sank a 500-ton steamer then landed on the "wrong" side of South Georgia - so Shackleton and two others had to climb over an uncharted mountain range to reach a Whaling station on the other side of the island.
It took Shackleton four attempts and four more months to return to Elephant Island to rescue the rest of his men, and at the end of that not one of the original twenty-eight had died.
Real boys-own-paper stuff.
The other day we watched Shackleton, a dramatized version of Ernest Shackleton's expedition to cross the Antarctic. Although a dramatized version, the script was based on the diaries and first-person accounts of the explorers and so it's very close to what actually happened.
The story didn't need any dressing up to make it more exciting - it's incredible enough as it is. I knew something about the expedition - that the ship, the Endurance, became trapped in the ice for several months before finally being crushed - but that was about all. I didn't really appreciate the true story of what happened.
The Endurance was stuck for nine months before being destroyed. Shackleton and his men, twenty-eight in all, pulled three large boats for weeks across very rough ice. The ice was drifting north and when it finally broke up around them they took to the boats, spending a week in freezing conditions before landing at Elephant Island.
Shackleton knew that the chances of rescue from Elephant Island were very slim, so he and five other men took one of the boats, improved it by raising the sides and putting a deck across it, and sailed it over 800 miles to South Georgia - a two-week journey and an incredible feat of navigation given that the seas they crossed are known to be among the worst in the world and that Frank Worsley, the navigator, was only able to get four navigation readings.
If that wasn't bad enough, the six men survived a storm at sea that sank a 500-ton steamer then landed on the "wrong" side of South Georgia - so Shackleton and two others had to climb over an uncharted mountain range to reach a Whaling station on the other side of the island.
It took Shackleton four attempts and four more months to return to Elephant Island to rescue the rest of his men, and at the end of that not one of the original twenty-eight had died.
Real boys-own-paper stuff.
Labels: Just Spouting, Movies
posted by Pete Ford at
11:21 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home