26-11-2023, 17:26
FINDING ENDURANCE Shackleton, My Father and a World Without End - Darrel Bristow-Bovey
![[Image: finding-endurance.jpg]](https://booklounge.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/finding-endurance.jpg)
Endurance was located in March last year by a team aboard the SA Agulhas II – an Antarctic research vessel and ice breaker replacing SA Agulhas I, now retired, whose activities over the years have been witnessed by many who live where I do. Finding Endurance in the Weddell Sea was quite a feat and she is to remain undisturbed, I believe. Filmed only and protected by the Antarctic Treaty – as much as that is, in fact, able to protect that final frontier which seems to be under constant threat from those greedy for her mineral deposits, if not her the creatures that inhabit the southern ocean and not to mention the perils of climate change, and so on. (https://endurance22.org/endurance-is-found)
The author is South African and he ties in personal histories of his own along with some 'brief' digressions in a different telling of the legendary expedition. He’s read the diaries and letter of several crew members, for example, which allow him to flesh out the characters in a manner quite different to Shackleton’s own account, and to that of Ranulph Fiennes. Not short on the nitty gritty either! I know the how the story goes and yet was still drawn in – how on earth they all got through that hell alive is nothing short of a miracle.
For anyone interested in this subject, it’s a great read and extraordinarily well researched, I thought. One of the more captivating books I’ve read in a while.
The blurb ...
"When Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance was discovered below the Antarctic ice in March 2022, 106 years after it sank, the world thrilled anew with one of the greatest survival stories of all time.
Acclaimed South African writer Darrel Bristow-Bovey has a deeply personal relationship with the story of Endurance and in this lyrical journey into past and present, into humanity and the natural world, above and below the Antarctic ice, he revisits the famous story wondering why it seems to mean more today than ever before.
Drawing on literature, natural history, personal memoir and the thrilling epics of polar adventure, this is a celebration of hope and generosity and a special kind of optimism. In the face of self-inflicted natural disaster, miracles can still happen: human miracles, performed by flawed people in helpless situations.
Not all is lost. Some of what is taken may yet be given back."
Endurance was located in March last year by a team aboard the SA Agulhas II – an Antarctic research vessel and ice breaker replacing SA Agulhas I, now retired, whose activities over the years have been witnessed by many who live where I do. Finding Endurance in the Weddell Sea was quite a feat and she is to remain undisturbed, I believe. Filmed only and protected by the Antarctic Treaty – as much as that is, in fact, able to protect that final frontier which seems to be under constant threat from those greedy for her mineral deposits, if not her the creatures that inhabit the southern ocean and not to mention the perils of climate change, and so on. (https://endurance22.org/endurance-is-found)
The author is South African and he ties in personal histories of his own along with some 'brief' digressions in a different telling of the legendary expedition. He’s read the diaries and letter of several crew members, for example, which allow him to flesh out the characters in a manner quite different to Shackleton’s own account, and to that of Ranulph Fiennes. Not short on the nitty gritty either! I know the how the story goes and yet was still drawn in – how on earth they all got through that hell alive is nothing short of a miracle.
For anyone interested in this subject, it’s a great read and extraordinarily well researched, I thought. One of the more captivating books I’ve read in a while.
The blurb ...
"When Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance was discovered below the Antarctic ice in March 2022, 106 years after it sank, the world thrilled anew with one of the greatest survival stories of all time.
Acclaimed South African writer Darrel Bristow-Bovey has a deeply personal relationship with the story of Endurance and in this lyrical journey into past and present, into humanity and the natural world, above and below the Antarctic ice, he revisits the famous story wondering why it seems to mean more today than ever before.
Drawing on literature, natural history, personal memoir and the thrilling epics of polar adventure, this is a celebration of hope and generosity and a special kind of optimism. In the face of self-inflicted natural disaster, miracles can still happen: human miracles, performed by flawed people in helpless situations.
Not all is lost. Some of what is taken may yet be given back."
"The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us." ~ Bill Watterson