📍  📍  📍  📍  📍  📍    She's going, boys. I think it's time to get off.  The ship was breaking up. She was being crushed. Not all at once, but slowly, a little at a time. The pressure of 10 million tons of ice was driving in against her sides. And, dying as she was, she cried in agony. Her frames and planking, her immense timbers, many of them almost a foot thick, screamed as the killing pressure mounted.

And when her timbers could no longer stand the strain, they broke with a report like artillery  fire.      📍  📍   When Ernest Shackleton had set out with a crew of 27 men, he had hoped to cross Antarctica. Unusually bad conditions meant that their ship was slowly hemmed in, and eventually trapped in the middle of a giant ice flow, miles from the coast of Antarctica.

Nevertheless, for months, hope had persisted.  There might be some way to get the ship loose, and either make for the Antarctic coast, or at least sail back for the safety of   📍 home.

The realization that the ship would not escape the ice flow came on gradually, and then all at once.  

The men hastily constructed a camp, and then watched as pressure from the ice flows tore the ship to shreds.    As the mast cracked and crumbled and the ship slowly disappeared under the ice, the men of the endurance took stock of their situation.

It was 1915. They were hundreds of miles from civilization in one of the most inhospitable places on earth with limited supplies. Everything about their situation was uncertain. They didn't even have solid ground beneath their feet.

And their ever changing location as the ice floes moved made  📍 forecasting a future or making a plan very difficult. They had some sledges and some snow dogs to pull them with, they had three lifeboats, and they had their own skills and will to live.  And they would need it. As they stared out toward the bleak white horizon, as they considered the cold and the lack of supplies, their own unsteady position and their isolation, one thing became terribly clear.

They were all likely to die out here.

    📍 Hello,  and welcome to How to Take Over the World. This is Ben Wilson.  Today, we are talking about Ernest Shackleton, the great British adventurer and explorer. Today, in particular, we're going to explore the story of the Endurance.  That is his ship that he took toward Antarctica with the intent of crossing the continent.

But, as you heard in that introduction, it got caught in the ice and it's a great story of overcoming and survival. Shackleton is one of the classic stories of great leadership. There are Shackleton seminars where you can learn to lead like him. There have been many books written about him, specifically about the  story of  📍 the endurance and about his leadership style.

And it's easy to see why he has generated so much interest when you study him. There's a great quote from one of his men who compares him to other explorers of the era. And he explains what set him apart. This guy says, For scientific leadership, give me Scott. That's another explorer. For swift and efficient travel, Amundsen.

But when you are in a hopeless situation, when there seems no way out, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton.  And so that's one of the things to learn from Shackleton, how to lead in difficult circumstances, in a seemingly   📍 hopeless situation. How to defy the odds, how to inspire people to do the impossible.

It's also an incredible adventure story, just unbelievable. A great story of the human capacity to survive despite  unbelievably difficult circumstances.   📍  My sources for this episode were Endurance, Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing. That is the one I will be pulling from the most.

It's actually one of the best books I have ever read. Incredibly well written, um, and a great account of one of the greatest stories of all time. Another source I use is Shackleton's own account called South, The Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition. And then I also reference a little bit Shackleton by Ronald Fiennes, although not so much.

That one covers his whole life, and in this episode I'm going to be mostly talking about the story of the Endurance, but I cited a couple times.  Okay, with all that said, let's get into it. This is the story of Ernest   📍 Shackleton and the Endurance.

 Ernest Shackleton was born in County Kildare, Ireland, on February 15th, 1874. He was   📍 the second of 10 children. And like many of the people we cover on this podcast, he was not considered bright as a child. He did really poorly in school. And this reminds me of many other people, Thomas Edison, for example, did poorly in school.

His school teacher called him adult thought he was just dumb. Uh,   📍 similarly, Mr. Beast was a terrible student and he thought he wasn't very bright growing up. I haven't done an Elon Musk episode yet, but similarly, his teachers did not think that he was all that bright as a child.

And what all these people share in common is a very addictive personality that makes it difficult for them to focus on things that they are not interested in. And that was Shackleton as well. He was, of course, very  📍 smart, but he had this intense will, this intense desire to do what he was interested in.

And so he was a voracious reader, but only when it came to reading things that he wanted to read. And he could hardly be bothered to read or study other things, things that he was assigned in school.   📍  And that meant that, yes, he was a poor student. He didn't get very good grades and he really struggled in the education system.

He always had a thirst for adventure and exploration. So he joined the merchant Navy.  As I mentioned, he was in fact quite intelligent, as well as enterprising, curious, and good with people. So he rose quickly once he became a sailor.

In his early thirties, he made a name for himself on the Nimrod expedition, where he, along with his companions, tried to reach the South Pole. They ran  📍 out of food and were able to make it, but they reached further south than any person ever had, and it was a major success. Upon his return to England, he became a major celebrity and was knighted.

He was now Sir Ernest Shackleton. So this happens in 1908, when Shackleton is 34 years old, and he was beaten to the South Pole just a short time later by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. And so Shackleton is a celebrity, he's accomplished a lot, but he is kind of disappointed from this loss to Amundsen.

And so he comes up with a   📍 plan. He can't be the first man to the South Pole, but he can be the first man to cross Antarctica, the whole continent. So he'll land on one side, sledge across the entire continent, Uh, you know, using a sled, pulled by sled dogs, and then get picked up on the other side of the continent by a different ship.

And Shackleton pitches it as an opportunity to regain Britain's honor. They had been beaten to the North Pole by the Americans, beaten to the South Pole by the Norwegians, but this would be an even more impressive accomplishment than either of those. Shackleton wrote, From the sentimental point of view, it is the last great polar journey that can be made.

It will be a greater journey than the journey to the Pole and back, and I feel it is up   📍 to the British nation to accomplish this, for we have been beaten at the conquest of the North Pole, and beaten at the first conquest of the South Pole. There now remains the largest and most striking of all journeys, the crossing of the continent.

So Lansing comments, he says, The plan was typical Shackleton, purposeful, bold, and neat. He had not the slightest doubt that the expedition would achieve its goal. The whole undertaking was criticized in some circles as being too audacious. And perhaps it was,  but if it hadn't been audacious, it wouldn't have been to Shackleton's liking.

He was above all an explorer in the classic mold, utterly self reliant, romantic, and just a little swashbuckling.  Okay. I like that description, especially the use of the word purposeful. Okay. So he says the plan was  typical of Shackleton and the first word that he uses is  📍 purposeful. And that was actually Shackleton's defining characteristic.

Here's another quote from Lansing. He says, whatever his mood, Whether it was gay and breezy or dark with rage, he had one pervading characteristic. He was purposeful.  And we'll come back to this later, but I think that explains Shackleton's leadership more than any other characteristic.  Purposefulness. He never forgot what the main objective was, and he was really great at focusing and shutting out anything else.  

 So he's got this plan to cross Antarctica. Uh, but what do you need? Well, the first thing he needs is a crew for the journey. There's an urban legend  📍 of a job posting that Shackleton puts out for his crew. Maybe you've seen it. Uh, here's the supposed ad. It says men wanted for hazardous journey, low wages, bitter, cold, long hours of complete darkness, safe return, doubtful, but Honor and recognition in event of success.

And it turns out this never happened. There is no evidence of this job posting ever existing. And the simple reason it never existed is Shackleton never had to seek out a crew. Here's what Lansing writes about what really happened when Shackleton announced the idea for this expedition. He says, Finding volunteers to take part in the expedition proved simple.

When Shackleton announced his plans, he was deluged by more than 5, 000 applications from persons, including three girls, who asked to go along. Almost without exception, these volunteers were motivated solely by the spirit of adventure, for the salaries offered were little more than token payments for the services expected.

They ranged from about 240 a year for an able seaman to 750 a year for the most experienced scientists.  Okay, so the job posting is fake, but the idea is actually kind of true. People signed up in the thousands for a job with low wages, bitter, cold, long hours of complete darkness and low chances of a safe return because they were attracted to the excitement of this expedition.

And I think that goes to show the impact of having an exciting vision. People want to be a part of it. They have this craving to do something bigger than themselves.  I find his interviewing style very curious. So he's got, you know, 5, 000 people that he needs to get through.  And I can't think of anyone else who I've studied who conducted interviews like Shackleton did. Listen to this, again from Lansing. He says, In the matter of selecting newcomers, Shackleton's methods would appear to be almost capricious.

If he liked the look of a man, he was accepted. If he didn't, the matter was closed. And these decisions were made with lightning speed.

There is no record of any interview that Shackleton conducted with a prospective Expedition member lasting more than five minutes.  And I guess,  if this style speaks to anything, it's trusting your instinct. Because, as it turns out, this wild process for interviewing turns out to be very successful.

Shackleton puts together a great crew of 27 men who would turn out to perform admirably under incredibly trying circumstances. And there are some great stories from these interviews of the types of things that he asked. So, here's one. It says, Leonard Hussey, an irrepressible, peppery little individual, was signed on as meteorologist, even though he had practically no qualifications for the position at the time.

Shackleton simply thought Hussie, quote, looked funny. And the fact that he had recently returned from an expedition as an anthropologist to the Torrid Sudan appealed to Shackleton's sense of whimsy. Hussie immediately took an intensive course in meteorology and later proved to be very proficient.

Another one. Dr. Alexander Macklin, one of the two surgeons, caught Shackleton's fancy by replying when Shackleton asked him why he was wearing glasses, quote, many a wise face would look foolish without spectacles. And Reginald James was signed on as physicist after Shackleton inquired about the state of his teeth, whether he suffered from varicose veins, if he was good tempered, and if he could sing.

At the last question, James looked puzzled. Oh, I don't mean any Caruso stuff, Shackleton reassured him. But I suppose you can shout a bit with the boys,  despite the instantaneous nature of these decisions, Shackleton's intuition for selecting compatible men rarely failed.

Okay. So these are the kinds of questions that he's asking people in five minutes. Can you imagine this? Like you, it's only a crew of 27 people. They are obviously going to have your life in their hands. Like you're really going to be relying on these men. And he's asking them, uh, so why do you wear glasses?

And, um, how are your teeth? Uh, do you have any varicose veins? And do you like to sing? Um,  This is the kind of stuff that mattered to him. And, uh, I think actually what he's going for is look  on a trip to Antarctica. We are really going to be cooped up in the ship for a long time. And so we really need to get along.

And so that's all I need to know. Like, do I like you? And I can figure that out in five minutes. So that's how he does  it. Shackleton had more difficulty with finding funding for the trip than he does finding manpower. But he eventually does get the money squared away. He acquires a ship, lays out the plans and gets everything prepared.

And one of the things he obviously has to prepare for and get squared away is the victualing, the food. He spends a lot of time figuring out what they are going to eat, how much of it they're going to need, and how they're going to get it. But luckily, you don't have to think about any of that because you can just order meals through Factor.

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So the ship that Shackleton acquires had originally been named the Polaris, but he renames it the Endurance because of his family motto, by endurance we conquer. And I love it. That's, that's a great motto, by endurance we conquer. I'm just gonna keep going until I win.  But at the last minute, he is thrown a curveball.

He's got the ship, he's got everything prepared, and a World War One breaks out right before they're supposed to leave. He and the crew wonder, if they should just abandon the journey in order to assist their country, their patriots. And so they think, I mean, is this the time to be, you know, taking all these, uh, you know, healthy, capable men and, and taking them out of the field?

So they send a letter to the government inquiring whether they should call the whole thing off. And they are sent a one word response, proceed.  And Winston Churchill himself later sends a longer letter explaining why the government wished for them to proceed with the journey instead of coming to help fight the war.

So, with those instructions in hand, the Endurance sets sail from England on August 8th, 1914. Their first stop is Buenos Aires, Argentina, where they pick up 69 sled dogs and, unknown to Shackleton, one stow away.  Shackleton is really upset when he finds out about this.

I mean, he had laid out all these plans very carefully, right? The food down to the day. I mean, of course they had a little slack, right? But he's planning on a certain number of people  And so, you know, this throws a wrench into his plans.

And for no good reason, just because a few of the men thought it would be fun and funny. The stowaway's name was Blackboro and Shackleton screams at him, really lays into him and then gives him an ominous half joking, but not really joking threat. Uh, it says Shackleton paused abruptly and put his face up close to Blackboro's.

Finally, he thundered. If we run out of food and anyone has to be eaten, you will be first. Do you understand?  A smile slowly spread over Blackborough's round, boyish face, and he nodded.   So after leaving Buenos Aires, they head south, and they make their last stop at a remote outpost called South Georgia Island.

It's a small, rocky island just outside the Antarctic Circle. There was a whaling outpost there, so it was the last chance for them to resupply, gather news, and have contact with civilization before setting off for Antarctica.

But the news they got at South Georgia was not good. They're asking the whalers, you know, what are things like, how are conditions, um, the intent was to sail through the Weddell Sea. is what it's called. And so, uh, you can think of it as like a giant bay, almost, uh, that the continent of Antarctica forms.

Because the Weddell Sea is protected by the continent from, you know, currents and waves and things like that, it's very still. It's a sea.

And so it has a propensity to gather these huge ice flows. You know, the ice just kind of hangs out and stays there. It makes it really difficult to get through. Well, this year it was really full of ice. You know, the, the whalers tell them that the conditions in the wettle sea were worse than they had ever seen in all the years that they had been there.

But I mean, you know, if you're Shackleton, what are you going to do  with a world war in full swing, if they turn back now, it could be years before they have a chance to return, if ever. This is their shot. And so on December 5th, 1914, the Endurance sets out from South Georgia.

Almost immediately, the conditions in the Weddell Sea conspired to make their journey impossible.  December is the middle of the summer in the southern hemisphere. And this was intentional. They were trying to go through during the summer when the ice flows were at their lowest and most navigable.

But at every turn, they encountered more and more impassable ice.  Journey, quote, It was as though the spirits of the Antarctic were pointing us to the backward track, the one track we were determined not to follow.  Just over a month later, they were able to navigate themselves to within sight of land.

By February, the Endurance found itself trapped in the middle of an enormous ice flow. It being the southern summer, much of the ice was young and mushy. And so for weeks, multiple attempts were made to break out, to push through, to, you know, they would get out of the ship and use picks, saws, and shovels to break up the ice and then try and, you know, sail forward and cut through, cut a passage, but all to no avail.

By February 24th, Shackleton realized that they were truly trapped and that the Endurance would need to winter where they were. Summer was turning to fall, and the young ice that had impeded them was freezing and gathering, cementing them in place. As one of the crew put it, the endurance was frozen like an almond in the middle of a chocolate bar.

Lansing says that, quote, Among the men, the realization that the endurance was really beset for good came very slowly, like a kind of creeping resignation, a bad dream from which there was no waking. Anxiously, they watched each day, but the face of the pack remained substantially unchanged.

This itself was not necessarily cause for panic. Though frozen in place, the endurance was upright, and not completely uncomfortable. Obviously, Antarctica is very cold, but the ship had extremely thick walls that made it really well insulated. So, like, yes, it was cold, but inside the ship, with proper clothing and a little bit of heat, conditions were not that bad.

And there were also plenty of supplies that could last them through the winter, and these could be supplemented by hunting seals and penguins. The hunting was actually quite easy, because in the Antarctic, seals and penguins have no land predators, or, you know, ice surface predators. Only sea predators, like killer whales and sharks.

So when a human approached, they just stood there and watched until the hunter closed in for the kill. Sometimes they didn't even have to shoot them, they would just club them over the head.   And so with this hunting and their supplies, food's not a concern. At first, the primary preoccupation was with where the endurance would end up,  the ice flow that they were trapped in was being pushed by wind and current.

Lansing says, quote,  the endurance was one microcosmic speck, 144 feet long and 25 feet wide, embedded in nearly 1 million square miles of ice. that was slowly being rotated by the irresistible clockwise sweep of the winds and currents of the Weddell Sea.  Okay, so if you can imagine that, the Weddell Sea, like I said, pretty calm, but the water tends to just circulate in a clockwise motion.

So they start, uh, like at three o'clock on the eastern side, and then they're just being rotated around this sea, this giant bay.

So they're being rotated, they're kind of spinning in a circle, and they're just waiting to see Where they will end up when spring comes. Uh, and then, you know, they're hoping they'll be able to break out and might be able to make a go at the continent or whether they might just have to, you know, sail home  

you know, the other thing besides like absolute survival, physical survival. Is that they have to worry about and that other ships really struggled with is mental survival,  keeping your wits about you. , they were just beginning the polar winter. where they'd have to endure months of complete darkness.

As Lansing says, quote, In all the world, there is no desolation more complete than the polar night. It is a return to the Ice Age. No warmth, no life, no movement.  Only those who have experienced it can fully appreciate what it means to be without the sun day after day and week after week.

Few men unaccustomed to it can fight off its effects altogether. And it has driven some men mad.

And there are plenty of accounts of boats that have ended up just like the Endurance, and the men are driven either suicidal or homicidal at each other's throats. Uh, you know, they get depressed, lethargic. It's not hard to understand why when you hear those conditions. But, There's very little depression on board the Endurance, and it's worth analyzing why.

One thing is Shackleton's policy of hiring on, you know, vibes only. As I said, if you recall, he interviews people for less than five minutes, and he's really just trying to get to know them. And so, all these guys kind of get along. , and so, you know, they, they kind of goof off and, uh, they're able to have a lot of fun.

Some of the things they do, they put on mock trials for fake crimes. Here's a description of one of them. It says in the next night, Wuzzles Worsley, that's his nickname, was put on trial for quote, robbing a Presbyterian church of a trouser button out of the offertory bag, and having turned the same to base and ignoble use.

The proceedings were long and disorderly. Wilde was the judge, James the prosecuting attorney, and Ord Lee's the defense attorney. Greenstreet and McIlroy gave testimony against the defendant, but when Worsley promised to buy the judge a drink after the trial, Wilde charged the jury to find the defendant innocent.

Nevertheless, Worsley was found guilty on the first ballot. Okay, so they're putting on this big mock trial for this very funny, fake crime of stealing a button from a church. They also had competitive sled races with men taking and placing bets on every race. So, you know, they got all these sled dogs, they have these sleds, and so they form these little teams.

And the teams, you know, they form rivalries and they have people betting on it And winning and losing a little amounts of money, but also, you know, cigarettes and tobacco and stuff like that.

There were regular social occasions. Every Saturday night, the men were issued a little bit of alcohol and it was drunk invariably with a toast quote to our sweethearts and wives, to which a chorus responded, may they never meet.  During the month of June, the average reading was negative 17 degrees outside.

That's Fahrenheit. Those are freedom measurements.  Okay, so it is cold, so you think, like, how do you even survive in those conditions? And yet, the men did bundle up and take trips outside, enjoy breathtaking views when the full moon provided enough light to see their surroundings.  

Okay, so they're finding ways to occupy their time,  , and mentally they're actually doing okay, despite, you know, this horrible Antarctic winter.

But in August, as the southern spring started to hit, this relative comfort started to turn into uneasiness.  The ice was breaking up, and with it, their sense of security. The frozen flow that had held them in place had kept them, you know, prisoners where they were, yes, but it also kept them safe. You know, nothing was changing, they were just embedded in this million square mile ice flow.

Now, a giant crack appeared, and the flow started to separate. The new pieces of the flow battered the side of the ship from time to time, causing it to shudder and tilt.

So you can imagine just like You know, think of the size of these ice floes. They are miles across, okay? So they're  thousands of tons, maybe millions of tons of weight, and they're just smashing this ship against each other. And then finally, the pressure was so immense that it pushed the ship out of the water and it suddenly listed to the side.

For the next few days, it was stuck there, tilted 30 degrees. Okay, so that's like a pretty steep incline. The men had to eat in this weird manner. If you can imagine, like, look at the room you're in. Now imagine it tilted 30 degrees to the side. So they actually had to eat kind of like in the corner of the room with their butts on the wall and their feet on the floor.

If that makes sense.

You know, at first, through all this battering, the endurance holds up well. It was an extremely well built ship. As one of Shackleton's top lieutenants put it, quote, She seemed to say to the grinding, hungry pack, You may smash me, but I'm damned if I'll go over another inch for you. I'll see you melting in hell first.

But even an excellently built ship can't stand up to the awesome power of nature forever.   On October 24th, the men heard and saw a giant pressure coming. The whole earth seemed to be in movement.

One of the men wrote, The whole sensation was of something colossal, of something in nature too big to grasp.

 I mean, just imagine that, right? Like,  through the winter, you have been on this ice flow, And it seems solid and stable. And now all of a sudden you have this wave of pressure come through and the whole ground turns to liquid, right? It's just  everything is kind of upended. Uh, the ice pushed, crushed, and tore at the ship until finally a gash was made across the front of the endurance and water came pouring in.

 It didn't immediately sink, and Shackleton sent his men pumping the water out and making repairs, but it seemed that the end was soon coming for the Endurance.    Largesthe ordered the lifeboats and as many supplies as possible offloaded to the largest of the surrounding ice flows.

Tents were set up, and a camp was made there on the ice. The next day, the situation worsened. The Endurance was crushed further. Shackleton wrote at the time, quote, 'The twisting, grinding flows were working their will at last on the ship. It was a sickening sensation to feel the decks breaking up under one's feet.

The great beams bending and then snapping with a noise like heavy gunfire.  Finally, Shackleton could see, you know, this is not going to go the other direction. Uh, it's over. And so he gave the word to the final stragglers. Who had, sometimes been hanging out on the ship. He says, she's going boys. I think it's time to get off.

, a group of about eight to 10 Emperor penguins came and observed the destruction of the ship with these weird mournful cries. And already in this dire situation, some of the men took this as a bad omen.

Do you hear that? One of them said. We'll none of us get back to our homes again.

 That first night on the ice, Shackleton couldn't sleep. He paced around the camp continually. Around 1am, he felt a jolt. He looked down to see a thin crack of ice in the middle of the camp.  As the seconds passed, it quickly widened. Shackleton ran from tent to tent, waking men and telling them to move to the larger of the ice flows as quickly as possible.

This was caused for panic. If the men ended up on separate ice flows, it'd be very difficult to get between the flows and they might be permanently separated. So Shackleton ran from tent to tent, waking men and telling them to move as quickly as possible. So they gathered their stuff and throw it to the larger of the ice flows that was created by this new division.

Finally, safe on their new ice floe, with all their men together in a new camp, and with all their equipment, the men dozed off to sleep under the watchful eye of Shackleton.

So you can see from this first night, conditions were very precarious out on the ice floes.  They had a camp, they had tents,   But they no longer had the feeling of safety that they had while they were on board the Endurance.

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 In the coming days, Shackleton came up with a plan. They would march across the ice flows toward Paulette Island, which was 350 miles away where Shackleton knew a team had stashed a cache of supplies.

Now, they weren't going to be able to walk the entire way. They couldn't just stay on the ice low until they got to land. They were going to have to, sail eventually. So they were going to drag two of the three lifeboats with them, knowing that they would eventually encounter open water. This was a desperate plan with the barest hope of success.

And yet, once again, there was a notable lack of discouragement. The men were glad to have a plan and something to do. Shackleton wrote, quote, The task was likely to be long and strenuous, and an ordered mind and a clear program were essential if we were to come through without loss of life. A man must shape himself to a new mark directly after the old one goes to ground.

And I like that. That's a great lesson. If one plan fails, you need a new one as soon as possible.

Having a really clear plan is an antidote to panic, to depression, to low morale. I mean, one of the things I think of is if you go back and listen to that episode on the Caesar guide to taking over the world, Caesar has few troops and lacks the backing of the Senate, but his opponent Pompey has no plan.

And Caesar does have a very clear plan. And so he wipes the floor with them. People deal really poorly with uncertainty and they are just super charged by the feeling that there's a plan and they just need to execute. It simplifies everything. And even when that plan is maybe not optimal, uh, it's way better than no plan.

So the first thing they have to do is Shackleton decides that if they are going to survive, they need to travel light. And so he calls everyone together and makes a dramatic gesture. Here's how Lansing describes it. Quote, In the afternoon, Shackleton called all hands together into the center of the circle of tents.

He explained it was imperative that all weight be reduced to the barest minimum. Each man, he said, would be allowed the clothes on his back, plus two pairs of mittens, six pairs of socks, two pairs of boots,  a sleeping bag, a pound of tobacco, and two pounds of personal gear.  Speaking with the utmost conviction, Shackleton pointed out that no article was of any value when weighed against their ultimate survival.

And he exhorted them to be ruthless in rooting themselves of every unnecessary ounce, regardless of its value.

After he had spoken, he reached under his parka and took out a gold cigarette case and several gold sovereigns and threw them into the snow at his feet. Then he opened the Bible Queen Alexandra had given them, and then he laid the Bible in the snow and walked away. It was a dramatic gesture, but that was the way Shackleton wanted it.

From studying the outcome of past expeditions, he believed that those that burdened themselves with equipment to meet every contingency had fared much worse than those that had sacrificed total preparedness for speed.  So I think there are two lessons to be learned here. The first is to sacrifice total preparedness for speed.

It reminds me of the Jeff Bezos quote, Quote, most decisions should probably be made with somewhere around 70 percent of the information you wish you had. If you wait for  90%, in most cases, you're probably being too slow.  So again, that is someone who is sacrificing total preparedness for speed.  The other takeaway is what I call selective irrationality.

You have to have your core principles, and you have to stick to them as a leader. Even when it's a little irrational. So an example of this, look at Costco, they could bump up their margins on a few carefully selected products and make a boatload of money whenever they want. But then where do you stop compromising?

It's the job of the leader to say, no, you know, we're going to take, I think Costco marks up everything at about 15 percent above cost. And so, you know, that's the job of the CEO of, of the founder of the leader to say, you know, we're, we're going to abide by our core principles all the time, even though rationally  we could cheat a little bit and, uh, and, and make some profits.

Um, there's a famous story of their founder, Jim Senegal, telling Costco's CEO, um, he asked if they could raise the price of the hot dog, uh, which has been a dollar 50 for a hot dog and a soda since 1984.  And one of my favorite quotes ever, Jim says to the CEO, if you raise the effing hotdog, I will kill you figure it out.

So look in the grand scheme of things, how much is a gold lighter going to weigh you down?  Not at all. Right? That's why it's selective irrationality.  It's irrational. It's worth a lot.  It weighs almost nothing, but you have to be the moral compass as a leader. You have to be the one who is selectively irrational by sticking to your principles.

Even when the rational thing is to cheat a little bit. So Shackleton gives up the lighter and the coins and the Bible.

Now, in this case, despite the sacrifices made, the plan is suboptimal. I mean, there's no great plan, right?  The boats are really heavy and the ice flows are too uneven.  On the ice flows, you have all of these ridges from where ice flows have crashed together and created, you know, this little bump.

So it's a nightmare to try to move all of their stuff. Because you have to clear the way for all these boats and these sleds. So they're doing less than a mile per day, and the terrain is getting worse and worse.  And so they're only going for a few days and have covered less than 10 miles when they decide to stop and set up a new camp.

Shackleton calls their new campsite Patience Camp.  They send out small expeditions back to the Endurance, which is kind of floating in tatters, to recover more provisions. And they also regularly hunt seals and penguins to keep restocking their food supplies.  They also, in probably the saddest chapter of this entire ordeal, kill all of their sled dogs.

Because Shackleton is coming to the realization that they're not going to be able to hike out of here. They're going to have to travel by boat, where they're not going to be able to fit sled dogs. And in the meantime, these dogs aren't helping at all, and um, they use quite a bit of food. And so, uh, yeah.

The dogs are, are all executed.

Some of the men were absolutely sick about it. I mean, it's horrible. It's horrible to read about.  

But of course, Shackleton can't let them just sit there dwelling on the negatives, that this plan is quickly failing. They have to come up with a new plan. And so they go, they recover the third lifeboat, and now the new plan is to camp out on the ice, and wait until it, A, carries them closer to land, and B, the ice flow starts to break up so that it will be easier to launch the boats and sail out rather than trying to walk out.

So after a little bit of, uh, kind of depression and moping, the mood in the camp is once again cheery now that they have a plan again. And so they hunt, they talk, they play cards, they debate. Conditions are horrible, but they have a plan and everyone knows what to do.

You know, Shackleton is extremely attentive to the morale of the party. Remember, as Napoleon put it, in war, the moral is to the physical as three to one. Or in other words, morale is three times as important as physical conditions. So Shackleton is obsessed about how to keep the men in good spirits.

Another thing he did, , in order to accomplish this is to keep any troublemakers or depressive types close to himself. So he thinks, you know, I'm a hearty personality. I don't break easily. So I'd rather take the brunt. of the bad attitudes and the bad actors than pushing it on other people and, you know, potentially souring the entire mood of the party.

As Lansing puts it, quote, As a consequence, he was intensely watchful for potential troublemakers who might nibble away at the unity of the group. Shackleton felt that if dissension arose the party as a whole might not put forth the added ounce of energy which could mean, at a time of crisis, the difference between survival and defeat.

Thus, he was prepared to go to almost any length to keep the party close knit and under his control.

Another thing Shackleton does is share his men's conditions.  He was a force of nature. He was famous. He was Sir Ernest Shackleton. He was literally a knight. No one could mistake him for just another one of the men.

They all called him boss. They all kind of reverenced him, but he made sure that even though he might have been socially and emotionally a little bit distant, he was physically very close. Again from Lansing, he says, he wanted to appear familiar with the men. He even worked at it, insisting on having exactly the same treatment, food, and clothing.

He went out of his way to demonstrate his willingness to do the menial chores, such as taking his turn as Peggy to get the mealtime pot of hoosh from the galley to his tent. And he occasionally became furious when he discovered that the cook had given him preferential treatment because he was the boss.

I think there's something really beautiful in that scene of his men trying to cheat to give him better treatment and him insisting that he share their exact conditions.  And by the way, this is, again, , another tactic used by,  probably most famously Julius Caesar, was really a general of the people, and George Washington, uh, was the same.

Those are two great examples, and it really endears you to people that you're trying to lead.  They are in Patience Camp for over three months, just waiting and watching. I mean, not just waiting and watching. They prepare the boats, they ready their supplies, they get everything ready, but there's not a whole lot they can do.

Until, finally, in March, They feel some ocean swells, which starts to create cracks and breaks in the giant ice pack that they're floating in. But they have this problem on their hands.  The breakup of the ice, which is going to allow them to escape via these boats, presents its own dangers. Because it means that the ice flow that they are camping on keeps cracking and splitting.

So, like, they need it to crack and split, but that is very dangerous. And, uh, Shackleton, of course, was deathly afraid of the party being split up. He thought if he got separated from part of the group, those men were as good as dead. And a number of times, the night watch calls out during the night that a crack has formed, and he's dead.

in the middle of the camp and men have to rush their tents and equipment onto the other side of the crack before the ice flow splits and separates them.

Also with this breakup, there are now all these, you know, crevices that are hard to get over. So it's making it harder to move around and hunt. And they begin to run low on food. So rations are shortened and the men are constantly hungry.

The ice flow splits and splits again and again and again until the ice flow that had started about a mile across is now no more than 200 yards.  And then one night, Shackleton once again had one of his bad feelings and can't sleep. And so he's up and pacing around at 11 p. m. when he hears a massive thud.

 and looks down to see the ice floe splitting right under his feet,  and right under the tent that he was sharing with eight other men.  It quickly widens to a crack of a few feet. Shackleton cries out, and most of the men scramble out of the tent, but one goes splashing into the newly created crevice.

Shackleton rushes forward, clears the tent, and sees a man wriggling in the water, trapped and weighed down by his sleeping bag. Shackleton reaches down, and with one tremendous heave, throws the man out of the water

just before, the ice comes crashing back together. Had Shackleton not grabbed him, he would have been crushed by thousands of pounds of pressure and pulverized.   Just to give you an idea of the conditions that they were in. Remember, he said,  you only get to keep the clothes that you have plus six pairs of socks, two pairs of boots.

And so this guy has. No extra pairs of clothes, neither does anyone else. And so for the rest of the night, he had to keep walking around the campsite to dry out a little and keep himself from freezing to death. They thought, you know, even if he gets into his sleeping bag with these wet clothes, he's just gonna freeze and die.

So for an entire night, this man gets no sleep and just has to walk in circles in order to survive.

The next day, Shackleton decides that the ice pack was loose enough and it was time to launch the boats. Besides their ice flow is tiny now and it's constant breaking and dividing was now truly hazardous. You know, they had narrowly missed complete disaster and a dead crew member. And so,  they, they couldn't do this anymore.

It was time to launch the boats they were going to make for elephant Island.

So this is a change in plans a little bit. The supply cache that they had wanted to go for was now impossible to get to because of where the current had taken them.  So they're headed for this island, Elephant Island, is completely deserted, no one on it, but there at least they would have solid ground under their feet, they wouldn't have to worry about constantly shifting ice flows, and they could make it a base of operations for a rescue mission.

So it seemed like a good next step.

On April 9th, the boats were launched. The chances of actually making it to Elephant Island were very slim. were frankly not good, but it was their only chance.  The journey in these three little lifeboats was pure hell.   The already freezing air was made worse when freezing spray burst over them with every wave.

Many of the men became seasick.

I mean, just imagine, okay? So they're out of the Weddell Sea now. They're coming out of it. And so there are waves now and they're rocking them. So imagine being huddled in a boat. , with at least eight other men and you can just really confined. It's very crowded. It's negative 20 degrees Fahrenheit outside.

That is negative 29 Celsius. For those of you who are not American and you're regularly getting soaked. By sea spray. So not only is it negative 20, but you are usually soaking wet. You're hungry. You don't have very much food and the food that you do have is often difficult to get to and not very good.

You can barely sleep because of the rocking of the boat and the cold and the crowded conditions. And then throw on top of that storms, treacherous winds that often blow against you, unpredictable currents that seem to conspire to push you away from your destination every turn. I mean, there are times when the wind and the currents are so bad that after Three days at sea.

navigator checks their location, and they have been just  rowing and sailing as hard as they can for three days, and they check the location, and they're 22 miles further from land than when they had started. So they had been working so hard, basically just to try and stay in place, and they hadn't even quite managed that.

I like Lansing's description. here's a quote about after one particularly bad night of storms, when some of the boats almost sink. Uh, he says, quote, But the dawn did come at last, and in its light the strain of the long dark hours showed on every face.

Cheeks were drained and white, eyes were bloodshot from the salt spray, and the fact that men had slept only once in the past four days. Matted beards had caught the snow and frozen into a mass of white. Shackleton searched their faces for an answer to the question that troubled him most. How much more could they take?

There was no single answer.  Some men looked on the point of breaking, while others showed an unmistakable determination to hold out. At least all of them had survived the night.  And it's the little things that really get to you when you read about them. For example, the men have to keep wiggling their toes all the time.

Their boots are full of water. You know, their boats are constantly flooding. And so their feet are like constantly submerged in water. And if they stop wiggling their toes, Then the pain stops. So there's this temptation to stop moving around their feet. , because, , , wiggling their feet keeps the blood flow going, but if they stop wiggling their feet, the pain goes away, it's all numbness,  but what's happening is they are succumbing to frostbite. And, you know, when they get to elephant Island, their feet will have to be amputated. So you have all these men, in addition to worrying about,  you know, bailing out the boat and rowing and, uh, and not going overboard and hunger and all this stuff.

Just like this little thing of, I constantly have to wiggle my toes. And if I don't, I'm going to lose my feet.  Or another one is the fact that all of them had diarrhea from eating uncooked food on the journey.

And so imagine all this stuff going on and in the middle of it you have this horrible stomach ache and you got to like put your rear over the side of the boat, , and diarrhea your guts out and then as you're doing that your bare butt is exposed to this negative 20 degree weather.

And, uh, you're always getting splashed by waves  as you're doing this. So,  you know, another one of these, like, crazy facts is, uh, this water. You know, it's ocean water, so it can go a little bit below 32 degrees. So I think the temperature is, like, it's 30 or 31 degrees water. And, um, It actually didn't feel bad.

It felt good,  because it was below zero degrees outside. So sitting in 30 degree water actually felt warmer than just the air. So, I mean, just imagine being in such a horrible cold condition that sitting in your cold plunge. And by the way, 30, 31 degrees, that's colder than your cold plunge. So imagine that sitting in your cold plunge would warm you up.

That's how cold it is.  And then add on this, you know, Ice starts to form on the boats and it's weighing them down. And so they're like, Oh, we have to, we're going to sink. And so they have to get axes and start chipping off the ice from the sides of the boat.  It's like unbelievably horrible conditions.

They're kind of on the edge of life and death the entire time,  especially at the end. They hadn't brought enough fresh water and ice to melt down and so the men start to get thirsty and so their tongues are swollen Their their lips are cracking There's a serious threat the most likely way they're going to die if they die on this journey is from thirst  At least towards the end

the other big danger besides dying of thirst. So that's they don't get there soon enough is that they Miss it, you know, it's a little island In, in the middle of the ocean.  And, there's this weird effect. So, you've got Antarctica. Well, think about it this way.  You've got the entire world. Think about the entire world.

If you are ocean water, and you go east or west, eventually you run into a continent. Right? So, you'll run into Africa, or you'll run into North or South America, Asia, Europe, whatever. There is one place,  where there's an entire band of people. Around the globe with no land, essentially, and it's the area just above Antarctica and just below South America, Africa, and Australia.

Okay, so there's this, this band.

And because there is no land to stop things, the water traveling west to east, uh, just keeps going and picking up momentum. So it's one of the strongest currents.  in the entire world. So this water is just like a whirlpool effect. Water and wind is just going really fast from west to east. And so, , if you get caught in this area, it's also super stormy because of these conditions.

And so, uh, it's called Drake's Passage, just below South America, and it's like the stormiest water  And if you get caught there, you can't go back because of the current. Does that make sense? So if they overshoot Elephant Island,  even by like, imagine they just barely sail past it. They're going to be caught in this current and they're taken east.

Oh, you know, at a million miles an hour, there's no turning around. There's no getting back. So like they could miss the island by a few yards.  And, and that's it. Like if they sail past it, there's no going back.

And it's, it's not easy to hit this, you know, it's 1915. Uh, they have no GPS, no technology. Uh, they have manual navigation, so they've got a chronometer and, uh, they have manual tools to measure their position by the sun and by the stars. But it's all this stormy weather, you know, often they can't see the sun and the stars.

So often they're kind of just having to estimate. where they are. , and so again, they keep worrying that they're going to wake up one day and see elephant Island behind them.  And even if it's just a little bit behind them, that's it. That means they're dead.  So they have one shot at this. If they overshoot it, that's the end.

And on April 14th, they wake up and they see elephant Island there in front of them.  They breathe a sigh of relief to know that they haven't overshot it.  They were only 10 miles away. So they wake up, we're 10 miles away. Awesome. We got it. But then a strong wind and current tried to pull them away. It took all their energy just to row, to keep in place and not lose ground for the day,  shackled and tried to issue the men biscuits to give them energy for one last push.

So he says, you know, use up all the food you got. Let's make it today.  But. They're so thirsty, you know, they'd run out of water at this point, that they can't eat the biscuits. They don't have enough saliva to swallow. And so Shackleton, his idea is, we'll then give them raw seal meat, and let's chew on the raw seal meat, in order to swallow the blood, to get just enough moisture, in order to swallow the biscuits.

So, like,  unbelievable stuff. But try as they might. You know, in this last day, they're only 10 miles away and, uh, and they can't make it. And that night, as they're just off the coast, they face the biggest storm yet.

 And so they're just trying to keep their boats upright through the night. They can't see these huge waves are just sweeping over them. , they're, there's snow and rain that is getting in their boats. And at this point, the navigator, the guy who's really pointing them where to go. Worsley is his name.

And at this point, you know, he's the navigator. They're really relying on him. He has not slept for six days. And so in the night in the middle of this huge storm, you know, he's at the front of the ship trying to steer it, and he just falls asleep, like just . He  slept six days.

He just passes out in the middle of the storm and some men in his ship trying to relieve him and tell him to get some rest, and they find. That he can't straighten his body. Like he's been six days in the same position, navigating through storms.  Just like, imagine the strain on your nerves of being the navigator for six days through all these storms and not moving an inch, just concentrating for six days straight in order to not capsize, not lose your bearings, just hang on.

And so, , he can't straighten up. Uh, his muscles have frozen him in place in the cold. And so the men in the ship have to gather around him and start rubbing his thighs and stomach to try and warm him up and loosen him up enough that he can actually stand up straight. And, uh,  by the time that they warm him up enough that he can, he was already asleep again,

but somehow. They make it through the night and in the morning, the wind dies down just before dawn and the sun rises over the horizon and they see that they are just a mile from Elephant Island. And so they pull in and put their feet on solid ground for the first time in  497 days.

 Okay, I can only imagine what that feeling must have been like, just, just to have, you know, there's nothing on elephant Island. There are no trees, no fruit, no supplies, but just to have solid land under your feet. And of course there are glaciers and snow on the Island. So there's fresh water as well.  Uh, when they arrive, Lansing writes, many of the men have stumbled about aimlessly scuffling their feet in the pebbles or bending down to pick up a handful of rocks.

Some even dropped full length to the ground to feel its sublime solidity beneath them. For a time, a few men simply sat down, shivering uncontrollably and mumbling gibberish to themselves. Just then, the sun came out. In its light, their faces showed dead white from exhaustion and frostbite, and from being continually soaked with water.

The circles around their eyes were so deep, their eyes seemed to have sunk slightly into their heads.  They readied some milk as quickly as they could, and each man's mug was filled. They drank it almost boiling hot, and its heat spread throughout their bodies,  setting their nerves to tingling, as if their blood had suddenly been thawed and begun to flow again.

And then they sleep for like basically an entire day.   Elephant Island,  you know, to anyone else, it's considered a truly amazing inhospitable place. It's just a rock. It's just a rock that happens to be near Antarctica.  But in addition to a narrow strip of beach, Elephant Island did have a few things going for it.

One was it had a nearby glacier to provide plenty of ice that could be melted into drinking water. And then the other thing it provided was large populations of seals and penguins that could be easily hunted for meat.  Though of course, there was this concern, no one knows when those seals and penguins will move on, they're migratory.

So Elephant Island was a breath of fresh air, but they couldn't stay forever.  And so Shackleton brought them a new plan.  He and five others would take the strongest of the three lifeboats, and sail it to an island with a whaling outpost, 800 miles away. So this was South Georgia Island, that place that they had started from.

And that was the last sight of civilization they had seen.  So, from Elephant Island,  Actually, South America was closer than South Georgia,   but I told you about that, that area, that current that flows west to east. Okay. So if they try and just go straight north to South America, they're going to get blown off course by that current.

So they can't make it. And so even though South Georgia is hundreds of miles further than South America, it's going to be easier to try and ride this thing all the way to South Georgia Island.

So they spend a couple days, they soup up this one boat a little bit, you know, they add more supplies, more support, more of everything. And so only ten days after they had arrived, Shackleton and his five boatmates set off on yet another treacherous journey.

Once again, the conditions were horrible. Once again, they only had one shot, the same phenomenon. If they overshoot South Georgia, there's no turning around and sailing back to it.  I won't go too much into the conditions of this voyage, Let's just say that they were, like the boat voyage to Elephant Island, only longer and worse.

You know, the seas were worse, the waves were sometimes 50 feet high, their sleeping bags begin to rot and fill up with foul smelling green sludge, so they can't get comfortable in their sleeping bags when they're not on duty.

Lansing paints a good picture of this boat midway through their journey saying, Here was a patched and battered 22 foot boat, daring to sail alone across the world's most tempestuous sea, her rigging festooned with a threadbare collection of clothing and half rotten sleeping bags. Her crew consisted of six men whose faces were black with caked soot and half hidden by matted beards, whose bodies were dead white from constant soaking in salt water.

In addition, their faces and particularly their fingers were marked with ugly round patches of missing skin where Frostbites had eaten into their flesh.

Their legs from the knees down were chafed and raw, and all of them were afflicted with salt water boils on their wrists, ankles, and buttocks.  On May 8th, after two weeks at sea, South Georgia was sighted. So, they're going through these 50 foot waves, and it's just crazy.

But two weeks into their journey, They see the island  and so once again they get this this false hope but nature still had more tricks up her sleeve. First they encounter hurricane force winds going the opposite direction which is not normal, right? You basically always get winds from west east but right when they're almost at the island they get these hurricane force winds going the opposite direction.

But they get through this, this hurricane, and, um, they're finally closer than ever, they're only a few hundred yards,  and they're almost on top of the island when they notice a reef that threatened to tear open the ship at the last minute. You know, they're just a few hundred yards from their destination, but they can't swim it.

It's too cold. Their situation is too desperate. And so suddenly like they're almost on top of the island and now they're rowing as fast as they could away from it as the tide brings them closer and closer to this reef that threatens to just tear up their boat so close to their destination

the navigator Worsley said that he thought quote not so much of dying because that was so plainly inevitable, but of the fact that no one would ever know. How terribly close we had come.  Can you imagine that feeling? Like, oh, we're dead. And I'm not thinking about death. I'm just thinking, man,  no one's ever going to know that we basically made it.

We were only a couple hundred yards away.  So I'll read now from Endurance by Lansing of what happens. Uh, it says, quote, He waited at the helm, silent and tense, braced for the final shattering impact when the boat's bottom would be torn out against some unseen rock. As he watched, the water streaming down his face and dripping from his beard, the sky to the east crept into view.

She's clearing it, he screamed. She's clearing it.  Miraculously, you know, they can't back up enough away to get away from this reef, but somehow the water just carries them over it in a wave and into this uninhabited Bay on the south side of South Georgia Island.

When Shackleton and his boatmates arrive, they find a dribbling little stream running down from a glacier, and they just fall on their knees and start drinking.  They set up camp and fell into a long, uninterrupted sleep.  They were now so close to their goal. You know, they're on the island, there, there's a whaling station on this island and yet they are still deceptively far from it.

Their boat was in no condition to make it back out of the bay and around the island. So they can't sail,  you know, to the station. They're on the island, but they're on the wrong side of it and they can't sail around it. And even though South Georgia is small, it has peaks that rise to over 10, 000 feet.

And in the 75 years that whalers had been coming there, no one had ever crossed the island.

It was basically impassable, especially for a weak, bedraggled, poorly supplied group of castaways. And yet, Shackleton realizes there is no other path, they're going to have to climb it.   And so Shackleton lays out his plan to the other men. He would take the two strongest remaining members of the party and cross the island to fetch help.

The interior would be even colder and less hospitable, and they couldn't carry the weight of camping equipment, so the men would have to hike as many days as it took until reaching help without stopping to sleep at night. So it's probably going to be two or three days. , that's fine. We're just going to march straight through, no sleeping.

As Shackleton and his two companions set off, they immediately encountered a nearly vertical wall and they had to cut steps into it with an ax in order to be able to ascend it.  And so that's what I want to emphasize here. This was not a hike.   They had to actually climb and use mountaineering skills at times to manage this journey  on the first night. So that they leave in the morning, they're climbing all day. They're going over these peaks. And on the first night, they get caught on a lower peak, and as the sun is setting, they're finding themselves at about 4, 500 feet above sea level, again, in like, essentially, almost to Antarctica.

So Shackleton realizes  they're going to die if they don't get off the mountain, , it's too cold.  Keep hiking at this altitude.  So Lansing writes, there was no need to explain the situation.  Speaking rapidly, Shackleton said simply that they faced a clear cut choice.

If they stayed where they were, they would freeze, in an hour, maybe two, maybe more, but they had to get lower, and with all possible haste. So he suggested they slide.  Worsley and Crean were stunned, that's his two companions, especially for such an insane solution to be coming from Shackleton.  But he wasn't joking.

He wasn't even smiling. He meant it.  

The men raised their objections, you know, the conditions were foggy. They couldn't see what was below like this is a huge risk if we just start sliding down this mountain. You know what? If there's a cliff or grava will just fall and Shackleton says, yeah.

If there is, then we might die. But if we stay here and we try and hike out, we know we'll die. So eventually they're like, okay, they link up legs and arms wrapped around each other, like they were going to ride a toboggan.

And so they kick off and it's the great world's greatest rollercoaster ride. They start sliding and sliding down, down, faster, faster and faster. And they start screaming. And, um, it says, you know, not entirely out of fear, but like  they are afraid that they're probably going to die. But in a weird way, it's also fun at the same time.

, and so they eventually levels out and they do survive and they get to the bottom and he says, quote, the three men picked themselves up, they were breathless and their hearts were beating wildly,  but they found themselves laughing uncontrollably. What had been a terrifying prospect, possibly a hundred seconds before had turned into a breathtaking triumph.

So they survived this, this slide and they continue hiking in these slightly warmer conditions. You know, at least warm enough to survive,  but you know, it's still freezing. They're exhausted. They have now been hiking for a day and a night with no sleep. And, um, you know, these two other guys, they say, come on, man, come on, Shackleton, we need a rest.

Just, just a little bit, just let us sit down and rest. And so they found a little spot that was sheltered from the wind and they sat down and the two others immediately fell asleep.  

And Shackleton too found himself nodding a little. It felt really good to sit down after all this hiking.   He'd been working for so long, you know, not just the hike, but the boat expedition before that. And then the boat expedition to elephant Island before that, like his nerves had just been strained for so long.

, and so as Shackleton sat there and started to nod off, his body felt good.  He felt comfortable. He felt  warm.  

But just as Shackleton started to nod off, he jerked his head up. He realized something. They were dying.   He had been on enough polar expeditions to know that this was how men froze to death.

That spreading warmth was death creeping into his body. He woke up the other men and told them it was time to move. He lied and said that they had been asleep for 30 minutes to hopefully help them believe that they were a little more well rested than they actually were. They walked for the rest of the night, always heading vaguely in the direction of the whaling station, but without any accurate map by which to orient themselves.

Finally, at 6. 30, as they're hiking, they wake up. Shackleton thought he heard something from over the hill. Was that a whistle?  The men waited with bated breath. They knew that the whaling station blew a wake up whistle at 6. 30 a. m. If he had indeed heard it, then a second whistle would sound at 7 to announce the start of the workday.

For a half hour, these three men counted down the minutes.

And then, exactly at seven o'clock, they heard it.  The unmistakable sound of the factory whistle.

They quickly stood up and moved toward the sound. Their path led them into a canyon with a stream. Eventually, the canyon narrowed until they had to wade up to their knees in this water. They then heard a sound that chilled their blood. A faint roar. As they drew near, their worst fears were realized. It was a 25 foot waterfall.

They were too close now to hike back out the canyon and try and find another way down. They didn't even know if there was another way down. The only way out was through.  They had a rope with them, which they tied to a rock. And one by one, they lowered themselves down until they finally jumped into the pool of freezing water down below them.

They swam out of the pond and onto solid ground and looked up from there. It was only a mile or so to the whaling station.

As they walked, they suddenly became concerned with their appearance. They finally realized, well, we're there, we're about to encounter civilization. And they started looking at each other and going, man, look at your hair, look at my beard. And they start, you know, combing and padding and trying to make themselves look slightly more presentable.

When they got to the station, they were first spotted by a boy who frightened by the men's appearance, ran and got help.

When some men came to see what the excitement was about, Shackleton asked them who the leader of the station was.

He was told it was an old Norwegian sailor named Sorrel. That's good, Shackleton said. I know Sorrel well. Please take me to him.  

The men took him to a nondescript little house, where they knocked on the door. Sorrel opened the door to his cottage and stepped back in astonishment.

At the men's monstrous appearance. Who the hell are you? He asked. Don't you know me? Came the reply. My name is Shackleton.  According to some accounts, Sorrel turned away and wept.

 The men were given a chance to groom themselves and bathe.  As months worth of soot and grime were scrubbed off, their faces went from black to white.  Their hair, now more than shoulder length, was cut back to its normal length.

Long flowing beards were trimmed back. Worsley accompanied one of the whaling ships to rescue the other three sailors on the south side of the island. Shackleton writes what happened next. Curiously enough, they did not recognize Worsley, who had left them a hairy, dirty ruffian and had returned his spruce and shaven self.

They thought he was one of the whalers. When one of them asked why no member of the party had come round for the relief, Worsley said, 'What do you mean? 'We thought the boss or one of the others would have come round, they explained. 'What's the matter with you? said Worsley. Then it suddenly dawned on them that they were talking to the man who had been their close companion for a year and a half.

Was held at the whaling station. Lansing writes, quote, 'Four white haired veteran Norwegian skippers came forward. Their spokesman, speaking in Norse with sorrel translating, said that they had sailed the Antarctic seas for forty years. And that they wanted to shake the hands of the men who could bring an open 22 foot boat from Elephant Island through the Drake Passage to South Georgia.

Of the honors that followed, and there were many, possibly none ever exceeded that night of May 22, 1916, when, in a dingy warehouse shack on South Georgia, with the smell of rotting whale carcasses in the air, the whalermen of the Southern Ocean stepped forward one by one and silently shook their hands.

Besides this little banquet, Shackleton took no time to celebrate or rest. 22 men were still waiting for him on Elephant Island.

A number of rescues were attempted, but had to be abandoned because of the ice flows, which were still heavy around Elephant Island. It had been three and a half months since Shackleton and his five companions had sailed for South Georgia. And most of the men were starting to come around to the idea that Shackleton was dead, and with him, any hope of rescue.

And then, on the morning of August 3rd, as the morning fog lifted, there it was. A ship.  It stopped a few hundred yards offshore, and a few men got onto it.  Even from the shore, the men could make out the unmistakable figure of Ernest Shackleton. As the boat pulled near, Shackleton shouted out, Are you alright?

All well, they replied. One of the men asked Shackleton to come ashore and see how they had upgraded the hut since he had left. But Shackleton had that singular focus which distinguished him, that purposefulness. Even at this moment, he wouldn't be distracted by anything that wasn't essential to the mission.

His men weren't safe yet. No, he told them, hop on board. Let's go home.

Well, they did go home, and that is the miracle of the story. That All 28 men made it home safe and alive. One of them had a heart attack on Elephant Island, uh, but lived through it, although weakened, obviously. And then, you know, I talked about the wiggling of the toes. Black Burrow, the stowaway, actually did stop wiggling his toes at one point.

And so one of his feet had to be amputated. , but everyone survived and that is actually like very little damage to come away from such a perilous journey.

So there's a lot to say About my takeaways from this story.

I have rarely found myself so moved But I'll just rapidly say a few of my takeaways and save the rest for my follow up episode So the first thing travel light it's better to be nimble and move quickly rather than try to be prepared for everything  Remember, morale matters more than material conditions.

Focus on making sure that your team is properly motivated. To that end, have a plan. Nothing kills motivation like uncertainty. Remove all uncertainty. A simple, imperfect plan is far preferable to waiting for a perfect plan.  As George Patton put it, a good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed at some indefinite time in the future.

Stick to your most important principles, and hold your team to them, even if you have to be selectively irrational. Think of Shackleton ditching the golden lighter.  Have that focus on your mission. Think of Shackleton refusing to see the hut. You know, that purposefulness, if it's not the core mission, we're not doing it.

And then lastly, the beauty of just the human will to survive.  One of the most beautiful stories I've ever read, one of the best books I've ever read. If you haven't read Endurance by Lansing, you are missing out on an absolute classic. And then I will finish with one last quote. It is remarkable that one of the greatest stories of all time has come to us from what is essentially a failed expedition.

And yet few journeys have so inspired and motivated the human race. I think that is part of the beauty of an audacious plan. Even in failure, the result is spectacular.

 And on that note, I'll close with a quote from the architect, Daniel Burnham, that I think encapsulates that sentiment perfectly. He said, make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably will not themselves be realized.

Make big plans, aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone, will be a living thing asserting itself with ever growing insistency.  Until next time, thank you for listening to how to take over the world.

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