Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage

by Alfred Lansing

we are in the hands of a Higher Power, and puny mortals that we are, can do nothing to help ourselves against these colossal forces of nature.

Unlike the land, where courage and the simple will to endure can often see a man through, the struggle against the sea is an act of physical combat, and there is no escape. It is a battle against a tireless enemy in which man never actually wins; the most that he can hope for is not to be defeated.

Charles Darwin, on first seeing these waves breaking on Tierra del Fuego in 1833, wrote in his diary: “The sight . . . is enough to make a landsman dream for a week about death, peril and shipwreck.”

Before long, to the men on board the Caird, it lost all elements of awesomeness and they found it routine and commonplace instead, as a group of people may become inured to the perils of living in the shadow of an active volcano.

Look what’s happening in Hawaii currently!

It was decided to name the place “Peggotty Camp,” after the poor but honest family in Dickens’ David Copperfield.