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The Legend Of Ernest Shackleton And His Insane Rescue Mission · The Matt Walsh Show

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  Speaker 1: In January of 1915, Ernest Shackleton, the captain of the
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  Speaker 1: ship Endurance, was trapped in the ice along with his
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  Speaker 1: vessel and 27 crew members about 85 miles from his
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  Speaker 1: intended landing point in Antarctica. It was what passes for
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  Speaker 1: summer in that part of the world, which meant temperatures
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  Speaker 1: hovered around negative two degrees Fahrenheit. Within a few short months,
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  Speaker 1: winter would settle in fully, temperatures dropping toward negative 30
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  Speaker 1: and the sun disappearing entirely for weeks at a time.
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  Speaker 1: During the blizzards that swept across the region, wind chills
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  Speaker 1: could fall to extreme levels thanks to sustained winds of
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  Speaker 1: 60 to 70 miles an hour. In those conditions, exposed
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  Speaker 1: skin freezes within a matter of seconds. Severe hypothermia follows
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  Speaker 1: soon after, then unconsciousness, then death. The 28 men of
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  Speaker 1: the Endurance were then trapped in one of the most
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  Speaker 1: inhospitable environments on Earth. The conditions were already severe, and
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  Speaker 1: they were only going to get worse, much worse. But
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  Speaker 1: the situation was even more dangerous than that. A ship
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  Speaker 1: trapped in Arctic pack ice is not like a car
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  Speaker 1: buried in snow on your driveway. The vessel was not
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  Speaker 1: resting on something stable or fixed. The ice itself is
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  Speaker 1: a shifting, grinding, violent mass of enormous slabs constantly in motion,
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  Speaker 1: compressing and colliding with whatever lay between them. When the
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  Speaker 1: wind rose, the ice would buckle into pressure ridges, towering
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  Speaker 1: walls of frozen blocks of ice that could rise 15
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  Speaker 1: feet or more. Slow-moving but immensely powerful, like icy battering rams.
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  Speaker 1: Shackleton could attempt to remain aboard the Adorance and wait
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  Speaker 1: for the ice to release them when it melts, but
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  Speaker 1: he also understood that there was no guarantee it ever would.
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  Speaker 1: It might be weeks, it might be months, it might
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  Speaker 1: even be years. In 1829, for example, the British explorer
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  Speaker 1: John Ross became trapped in the Arctic ice and remained
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  Speaker 1: frozen in place for four entire years before finally breaking free.
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  Speaker 1: In 1845, another British expedition under the famous John Franklin
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  Speaker 1: set out in search of the Northwest Passage and became
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  Speaker 1: trapped in Arctic ice aboard his ships, the Erebus and Terror.
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  Speaker 1: Franklin and several of his men died in the stranded ships,
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  Speaker 1: waiting for the ice to melt, which it never did.
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  Speaker 1: The remaining survivors eventually abandoned ship, tried to march south,
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  Speaker 1: and they were never seen again. But the real danger
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  Speaker 1: that one Shackleton would have been thinking about in January
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  Speaker 1: of 1915, was not simply being trapped, it was what
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  Speaker 1: came next. If the Endurance were crushed by the ice
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  Speaker 1: and sank, the men would be left stranded on the
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  Speaker 1: drifting ice, exposed and isolated, with no ship, no shelter,
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  Speaker 1: and no supplies beyond what they could carry. They would
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  Speaker 1: be adrift on a frozen ocean, dozens of miles from
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  Speaker 1: the nearest solid land, which itself was an empty, hostile wasteland.
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  Speaker 1: If you're looking for an environment comparable to Antarctica, just
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  Speaker 1: to give you an idea, you won't find it on Earth.
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  Speaker 1: In practical terms, it's closer to another planet than anything
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  Speaker 1: most people have experienced on Earth. Indeed, being stranded there
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  Speaker 1: in 1915 would have felt less like being lost somewhere
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  Speaker 1: on Earth and more like being stranded on Mars. And
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  Speaker 1: in fact, 90 years later, in 2005, a French Italian
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  Speaker 1: research facility named Concordia Station would be established. on the
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  Speaker 1: Antarctica plateau. The station, dubbed White Mars, is still used
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  Speaker 1: as a Mars analog by scientists to study the effect
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  Speaker 1: of Martian weather and isolation on human beings. And this
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  Speaker 1: is where Shackleton and his men were now trapped. The
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  Speaker 1: only saving grace for Shackleton was that, at least at first,
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  Speaker 1: food was not an immediate concern. The endurance had been well-provisioned. Bacon, rice,
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  Speaker 1: canned meats, other preserved stores, including supplies intended to prevent scurvy,
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  Speaker 1: which is a horrific disease caused by vitamin C deficiency
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  Speaker 1: that had killed thousands of sailors across centuries of exploration.
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  Speaker 1: And most importantly, of course, there was rum and lots
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  Speaker 1: of it. But if the ship were crushed by the ice,
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  Speaker 1: as Shackleton already understood, those stores would be lost, almost
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  Speaker 1: all of them, beneath the sea. From that point forward,
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  Speaker 1: survival would depend on what could be taken from the
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  Speaker 1: environment itself, penguins, seals, seabirds when available. And when those
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  Speaker 1: inevitably ran out, there remained only one last resource, the
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  Speaker 1: sled dogs. By early 1916, with food supplies exhausted and
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  Speaker 1: the men on the edge of starvation, each of the
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  Speaker 1: dogs would be taken away behind the ice out of
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  Speaker 1: sight of the others and killed for food. It was
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  Speaker 1: done quietly without ceremony, and those who carried it out
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  Speaker 1: later described it as the worst moment of the entire expedition.
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  Speaker 1: But standing on the Endurance in 1915, looking out across
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  Speaker 1: the pack ice, stretching to every horizon, Ernest Shackleton could
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  Speaker 1: not have been entirely surprised. He knew exactly what he
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  Speaker 1: was getting himself into. This was Shackleton's third expedition to
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  Speaker 1: the frozen South. His first came