Comments

  1. brightmoon says

    I think I was more fascinated by the animals . I’m a too much of a homebody to think of explorers as other than being a little crazy 🤷🏽‍♀️

  2. AstroLad says

    I read a Reader’s Digest version of Alfred Lansings’ Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage about 60 years ago. Shackleton and his crew were throwbacks to the wooden ships and iron men of the Age of Sail.

  3. bcw bcw says

    I know how Shackleton felt after Covid put my travel plans on ice for a couple of years, too.

  6. birgerjohansson says

    The average depth of the ocean is over 4000 m, doing research down there is hard.
    .
    OT
    Digging into the past:”How I exposed Jimmy Savile”
    https://youtu.be/f-w3YhZuJeQ
    This investigator started a momentum that helped bringing down Epstein and Weinstein.

  8. nomdeplume says

    I always admired Shackleton until I just discovered they shot the dogs and the ship’s cat.

  9. mathscatherine says

    I’ve always been fascinated by the “heroic age” of Antarctic exploration, so it’s fascinating they’ve found Endurance. So few of those ships are still in existence – I’ve seen both Fram and Discovery, and both were amazing.

    As for the “they shot the dogs and the ship’s cat” – yes, they did. The cat wouldn’t have survived the trek across the ice, and they didn’t have the food to keep it going. As for the dogs, the plan was always that some dogs would be fed to other dogs/ people, as that was the only way to get fresh food in the middle of Antarctica.

    Scott’s expedition a couple of years earlier they did bring all the dogs back safely (though they killed and ate their horses), partly because Scott didn’t like the idea of taking dogs only to kill them (though there were also other reasons). He frequently gets criticised for the decision, as 5 people died – it’s interesting to hear a comment arguing the opposite (not saying you’re wrong – after all, the men all volunteered, but the dogs didn’t).

  10. StevoR says

    @ ^ mathscatherine : Parallels with European Australian explorers Burke & Wills who shot and ate their camels (& Burke’s horse) during their ill-fated disasterously run north-south crossing of Australia in 1860-1861 :

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burke_and_Wills_expedition

    The camels – & horses -didn’t volunteer for that either.

    As for the 1872 Warburton expedition .. :

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Egerton-Warburton#Expeditions

    (Damn. Expected there tobe more available onthe particualr horrors & sadistic cruelty to Indigenous people of that. No one else seems to recall or have put up video’s / quotes from Bill Peaches old (1980s) The Explorers series? Seems not.

  12. jacksprocket says

    Looks like the sunken wrecks in Tintin etc- which in reality, in warm oxygenated water, are eaten away down to the mudline. Of course, in Tintin there’d be skeletons sitting, fully clothed, at a table in the captain’s cabin. 3000 metres, 300 atmospheres pressure- exploration down there is hard.