He has been called “the greatest leader that ever came on Gods earth,” yet he never led a group larger than twenty-seven. He failed to reach nearly every goal he ever set, and until recently, he had been little remembered after his death. But once you learn the story of Sir Ernest Shackleton and his remarkable Antarctic expedition of 1914-1916, you’ll come to agree with the effusive praise of those (Under) his command. He is a model of great leadership and, in particular, a master of guidance in crisis.
That’s because Shackleton failed only at the improbable; he succeeded at the unimaginable. “I love the fight and when things are easy, I hate It.” he once wrote to his wife, Emily. He (fought his way toward) the South Pole in 1902 when he was part of a three-man Farthest South team on the Discovery expedition of the renowned explorer Robert F. Scott. But the men turned back only after walking their ravaged bodies to within 460 miles of the Pole in a terrifying cold experienced by only a handful of human beings at that time. Six years later, commanding his own expedition, Shackleton was forced to turn back a (heartbreaking) 97 miles short of the Pole, but only after realizing it would be certain death by starvation had his team continued. He was forgiven that (failure) in light of the greatness of the effort; he was knighted by King Edward VII and honored as a hero throughout the world.
His greatest failure was his 1914-1916 Endurance expedition. He lost his ship before even (touching) Antarctica. But he reached a new pinnacle in leadership when he successfully led all the members of his crew to safety after an agonizing two-year fight for their lives.
It is a tale so amazing you’ll wonder why the Endurance saga hasn’t become a part of every school age child’s reading. If Shackleton’s expeditions ultimately were all disappointments to him for (falling short of) their goals, he made plenty of grand achievements to his credit along the way. As a member of the Discovery team, Shackleton was among the first to attempt to reach the South Pole, or even to venture inland from the Antarctic Coast. He was the first to discover vegetation on a remote Antarctic island. His Nimrod expedition located the Magnetic South Pole, invaluable for navigational charts. He was the first to find coal in the Antarctic, altering how scientists saw the makeup and the origins of the continent. He pioneered innovations in exploration packing, clothing, diet, transport, and equipment.
Sir Ernest set out at age forty on an independent voyage to make what he considered the last great expedition (left) on earth: an eighteen-hundred-mile crossing of Antarctica on foot. The expedition ship, named the Endurance after the Shackleton family motto “Fortitudine Vincimus, By Endurance We Conquer,” set sail in August 1914 at the dawn of World War I and (made its way to) Buenos Aires, to South Georgia Island, and eventually to the Antarctic Circle, where it plowed through one thousand miles of ice-Encrusted waters. Just one day’s sail (from) its destination in Vassal Bay on the Antarctic coast, the ship got stuck like an almond in a chocolate bar” as it was later described, in the polar ice of the Weddell Sea.
The men (were stranded) on an ice floe more than twelve hundred miles from the farthest outposts of civilization. Whenever it seemed the situation couldn’t possibly get worse, it did. The pack ice precariously dragged the ship north for ten months. Then, the Endurance was crushed and the men were forced to camp on the ice. They watched in horror one month later as their vessel sank to the bottom of the sea. No one knew anything had happened to them. All they had to (rely on) were three lifeboats salvaged from the ship. Shackleton allowed each crew member to carry only a few items necessary for survival. The first things (tossed): gold coins and a Bible; saved were personal diaries and a banjo.
When the weather was its most brutal, the men endured temperatures that were so low they could hear the water freeze. The bitter cold froze their garments (solid) and burned their hands and feet. They slept in tents so flimsy they could see the moon through them. They spent nearly four months in the frigid darkness of the long polar night. When the Antarctic summer finally brought warmer temperatures and the (promise) of some relief, the men awoke every morning in cold puddles of water as their body heat melted the icy floor of their tents.
Eventually, when the ice began shattering beneath them, the men took to their three small lifeboats. After more than four months of mind-numbing boredom, they suddenly were (empowered by) an intense battle for survival that brought them to the limits of human capabilities. They fought the sea for nearly a week before landing. They were cold, hungry, exhausted, and so thirsty their tongues swelled in their mouths. When they finally reached Elephant Island, they found it a stinking, guano covered place ravaged by storms. Most of the crew spent the last months of their ordeal huddled under two overturned lifeboats.
In the end, Shackleton took five men and sailed eight hundred miles in a lifeboat over stormy seas to reach the inhabited island of South Georgia in the remote South Atlantic. When (by) some miracle they made their destination, they found they had to cross a nearly impassable frozen mountain range to reach civilization: a whaling station. The whalers, who had seen so much in their own hard lives, were in awe of the invincibility of the men. Immediately, Shackleton (turned around) and led an effort to rescue the rest of the crew on Elephant Island. Amazingly, every single one had survived.
According to Napoleon, a leader is a dealer in hope.” Shackleton knew how to keep hope in plentiful supply – during the 1907–1909 Nimrod expedition to the Pole when death was nearer to the men than their waiting ship, and during the long hardship of the Endurance expedition. When it was preposterous to think they could get out alive, he convinced his men that only a fool would say they wouldn’t. “We were in a mess, and the Boss was the man who could get us out. It is a measure of his leadership that this seemed almost axiomatic,” said Reginald W. James, physicist on the Endurance.
“The Boss,” as his men called him, built success on a foundation of camaraderie. Loyalty, responsibility, determination, and (above all) optimism.
Some sixty years after the rescue, an interviewer asked Endurance First Officer Lionel Greenstreet, “How did you survive when so many expeditions (perished)?“ The old officer, then eighty-two, answered in one word: “Shackleton.”
コメントを残す