|
|
|
March 2, 2003
Review: Facing the odds
I READ this biography very soon after I had seen a television documentary about Ernest Shackleton’s third expedition to Antarctica. It set me wondering about the tricky interplay between a portrait in words and a portrait on film. The biography is short, just over 200 pages; has lots of lovely contemporary photographs; an excellent map showing Shackleton’s four polar explorations and best of all it reads well.
Shackleton had been fascinated by the polar regions ever since he had seen a penguin skin in a neighbour’s house as a child. At 16 he joined the Merchant Navy and had sailed round Cape Horn in atrocious conditions several times before he was 20.
At that time, at the beginning of the last century polar exploration was the in-thing. Everybody was doing it and Robert Scott was the leader of the pack. Shackleton was determined to be part of the action and managed to get himself on Scott’s 1902 expedition. He was one of four chosen to make the final push to the South Pole but they were forced to retreat on the last stretch. Shackleton then led his own team, which managed to get further but still failed to reach the Pole.
The biography gives a graphic account of a driven man striving against insurmountable odds to do the hardly possible. But it was the film that really brought home to me what Shackleton was up against. The stark images of the immense desolate landscape; men’s anxious frightened faces as they faced the inhuman elements; and best of all Shackleton inspiring and leading his chaps against such immense challenges. Kenneth Branagh played the part with Shakespearean intensity.
The film showed Ernest Shackleton’s third expedition to Antarctica in 1914. His aim was to cross the polar landmass but before he disembarked, his ship got squashed to smithereens by the ice. He and his crew of 27 men then camped out on the ice for an incredible five months. When the ice melted, they rowed in three small boats to an uninhabited island. Undaunted Shackleton took three others in a small dinghy and spent 14 days crossing tumultuous seas to another island. Even there they had to do a forced march for 36 hours over mountains before they reached some sort of help. Going back to collect the others took four months. Not a single man died. It was an epic journey of endurance by any standards.
The portrait in words, the biography gave me a more complete picture of the man. In particular, it showed his relationship with his long suffering wife left alone with small children for years on end not knowing what was happening at the other end of the world to her intrepid husband. There was no email or radio in those days! The book also movingly describes the drain on his enthusiasm as the repeated failures to reach his expeditions’ goals took their toll on his health and demeanour.
He died on his fourth expedition of a heart attack at the relatively young age of 47. And his Irish childhood is warmly described. So we have a picture of the whole man but the portrait in film is essential to actually show the odds he was up against. No words can adequately visualize the hell that the Antarctica exploration must have been at the beginning of the last century.
Shackleton: An Irishman in Antarctica
By Jonathan Shackleton and
John MacKenna
The Liliput Press, Dublin
ISBN 1 84351 009 X
192pp. £19.99
|
|
|
|
