No Guarantees
The recruitment poster cut to the chase:
“Men wanted for hazardous journey to the South Pole. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success.”
Not exactly the kind of advertisement that got folks pushing and shoving to get to the front of the line. And yet it did, so says the legend of Sir Ernest Shackleton.
Ernest Shackleton was a British explorer who set out in 1914 on an expedition to cross Antarctica, and he needed men to help him make the trek. But he didn’t just need any men. He needed the right kind of men. Ones that knew what they were up against and wanted in anyway. Ones who could deal with the less than stellar odds. Ones who were able to be more about what they were doing than what they’d get if they got it done. Rare breeds.
He knew what to ask for because he knew what he had to have.
The story goes that he placed that now infamous ‘want ad’ in the local paper, and throngs applied. Shackleton then handpicked a crew from the masses and together they set out on a mission without any guarantees.
It’s hard to say what makes men capable of making such a leap, much less feel called to do so. In 1914, World War I had just begun, so it’s possible the uncertainty of time was so pervasive that the dangers of a sea expedition didn’t feel like that much of a risk. Perhaps poverty and need drove the men toward any hope of a different tomorrow regardless of the potential peril encountered along the way. Or maybe a bunch of them were just all about the rush of adventurous discovery, or perhaps they were enamored with the lure of fame and fortune that might lie on the other side. There are all kinds of reasons for the things people do.
Ultimately, twenty-seven courageous men joined the exploratory journey and they set sail to make discoveries that would change how we see the world.
Unfortunately, Shackleton’s expedition failed.
The mighty ship hauling the brave explorers stalled in a dense ice pack in the Weddell Sea where Shackleton and his men were stuck for 10 months in the depths of winter’s rage. After abandoning ship, five men and their fearless leader sailed 800 miles on a lifeboat to an island to get help, and then sailed back to get the others who had been floating on tiny sheets of ice while they were gone. The entire twenty-eight-man crew survived.
Expeditions are supposed to prove something. They’re undertaken to provide evidence to support what we believe, or define what isn’t clear, or unearth what we can’t know. They are, by definition, revelatory. And this one was. It just didn’t tell us much about Antarctica.
Shackleton’s failed attempt, instead, gave us a glimpse of human potential. A snapshot to pin on a bulletin board when we think we’ve been through enough. We won’t ever know what prompted the men on that journey to lock arms and set sail against such insurmountable odds. We also won’t ever know exactly how they did it, either. “Whys” and “hows” run loose like liquid when we try to hold them in our hands. But the take-aways are solid—just one of the many being that God’s creatures have a capacity mere mortals cannot understand.
Last week, Ernest Shackleton’s sunken ship was found 10,000 feet under the sea. The massive vessel was discovered miraculously intact. It seems the freezing temperatures of the water have acted as century-long preservation for the three-masted wooden ship. Photographs of the underwater discovery show the ship’s name—Endurance—clearly emblazoned across the front of the stern. An apt reminder that its sailors did, and it did, too. And, maybe, that we must.
Photographs of the underwater discovery show the ship’s name—Endurance—clearly emblazoned across the front of the stern. An apt reminder that its sailors did, and it did, too. And, maybe, that we must.
I’m pressed to pause and wonder about the spacing and the timing of it all. What might the ten-million-dollar discovery be telling us right now? To forge on? Maybe. To hang on? Probably. To know that we can do things we never thought we could? Absolutely.
In a world bubbling with things we cannot understand, atrocities we cannot fathom, a future we must strain to see, it’s nice to be reminded that some things do endure. Ernest Shackleton’s men made it when every odd on earth was against them. They steeled themselves to the North Star of living, and that’s entirely different than trying not to die. That just might be the porthole that drew them together in the first place—the willingness to recognize all the horrors and sign up anyway. They went, perhaps not in spite of, but maybe because of all the things that threatened to line up in their way.
Things that are built to last usually do. People and things. Even if it takes a while to be able to prove it.
Sherri Coale
P.S.
