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VOLUME 28
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Hi everyone. Welcome to the start of winter. As the colder season kicks into high gear and Toronto, where we live, is being dumped on with snow, we thought we'd start with a story of ice and cold. And leadership stories don't get any better than this one. Someone once said "That which doesn't kill me makes me stronger". Leaders are made in bad times more than good times. When things go wrong, human beings are challenged. And when we are, we find out just what we are made of. At roughly the same time back at the turn of the century, two polar expeditions set out - one to the arctic and one to Antarctica. Both ran into trouble and got stuck in the ice. The first team perished. The Antarctic team survived 18 months literally stranded on the ice. The difference was leadership. Herewith the story of the leader and his team whose journey of Endurance stands as one of the greatest survival stories of all time: Sir Ernest Shackleton. Have a great month!
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FEATURE
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THE SHACKLETON EXPEDITION
The greatest survival story of the 20th century began with an ad. Not an ordinary ad, this was arguably the greatest piece of copy ever written. It was placed in a London newspaper, and it read as follows: Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success. The author was a good natured, likeable Irishman named Ernest Shackleton, whose charm covered a burning ambition for greatness. Shackleton had joined the navy to see the world at age 16, been part of Scott's failed mission to reach the south pole in 1902, by age 20 had endured incredible physical suffering as an explorer, and in 1911 was ready to make his mark on the world. His vision was clear: cross the entire continent of Antarctica, a land mass larger than China, from sea to sea. 1800 miles of uninhabitable frozen terrain. The greatest polar journey ever attempted. 
With gifts and loans, he bought a ship which he named the Endurance. The famous ad was to find him the crew he needed. Shackleton's genius as a leader knew exactly how to touch the hot buttons of the kind of man he was looking for. 5000 men applied for 28 jobs! In August 1914, the tiny Endurance departed from England with a crew of seamen, scientists, doctors, escapists, and a photographer, as well as 69 sled dogs. After crossing the incredibly dangerous Antarctic Ocean, they anchored at a whaling town on the island of South Georgia, 1200 miles off the coast of Antarctica. Little did they know that this tiny village would later be their salvation. As they set off toward the narrowest part of the continent, the first signs of trouble emerged: ice, and lots of it, very far north. Nine days later, their worst fears came to life: the ice started to close in on them. 
If they abandoned ship, it meant a journey on foot across incredibly dangerous frozen sea to land, and then crossing the continent with the limited supplies they could take with them. If they stayed, there was a chance the ice might recede. Shackleton decided to stay with the ship. His genius as a leader was to keep his men working as a team, and their spirits high even as temperatures dipped to minus 40 in the darkness of the Antarctic winter. He insisted they all crop their hair so as not to look too disheveled. He nicknamed their quarters the Ritz, created routines to keep them busy, and organized games and music. All the while, he stayed infectiously optimistic. 
On they drifted in the frozen winter sea, moving 600 miles from where they started. Then the ice began to break, and as it did, it forced the Endurance up and out of the water and onto its side. The hull was crushed, water rushed in, and they were forced to abandon ship and make camp on an iceberg, Now they were shipless in the middle of the Antarctic Ocean. Even then, Shackleton kept his optimism, knowing that the real enemy was not the cold, but his men's morale. They had no choice but to go on foot across the ice. So they set out pulling their boats, each of which weighed over a ton. After 48 excruciating hours of effort, they had gone a mere two miles. Escape was impossible. So once again they settled on the ice. The Endurance, which was their shelter and source of firewood, sank, so they pitched five small tents on the frozen ice, and distributed sleeping bags. Body heat caused the snow to melt, soaking the men and bags. Morale plummeted. Shackleton put the most difficult men in his tent, and constantly shifted people around to manage the delicate human chemistry that was going on. 
Food supplies were dangerously low, as were matches. They were forced to shoot their sled dogs, because they consumed valuable food. Finally, 14 months after they had been imprisoned in the ice, open sea appeared. They launched the lifeboats into the freezing cold water, soaking wet and achingly cold, chipping their frozen hands off the oars. Their food was one biscuit a day. As they said: "We looked at it for breakfast, sucked it for lunch and ate it for dinner." There was no water - they chewed leather to get saliva. Many of the men by now had gone insane. Incredibly, they made it to a tiny island named Elephant Island, set foot on land for the first time in 16 months, killed some seals, and had a hot meal, their first in months. 
But they were not safe, they were simply out of the ice. The only way to civilization was back to South Georgia where they had started it all - 800 miles northeast. He knew they could not all make the journey, so Shackleton decided to take one boat with himself, his navigator, the carpenter and 3 others. They patched a lifeboat, made a deck of canvas and a sail, and set out. The rest stayed behind on Elephant Island. Shackleton and a few men were about to try crossing the southern ocean in a 30 foot lifeboat, a voyage no one had ever survived in any craft. Finding South Georgia would be like finding a needle in a haystack, and all they had was a sextant. If they missed by a degree they would miss land by 30 miles. The ocean gales blew, and waves rose to 50 feet. They had to chip the ice off the boat as they went or it would sink them. They took 15 minute sleep shifts so as not to freeze to death. Then on the 15th day they saw seaweed - a sign of land. After 17 days they hit South Georgia - the most incredible small boat journey ever in recorded history. Still it was not over, They had landed on the wrong side of the island - the whaling station was on the other side - 150 miles by sea. The only choice was overland, a journey no one had ever done before. 
Shackleton and two others set off across the island armed with a compass and a rough sketch of the island. They put screws in their boots to get traction and tied themselves together with a rope. Climbing across 50 foot crevasses, still exhausted and frozen from the ocean journey, they walked for 26 hours straight, never having more than a catnap because they knew that if they slept they would freeze. Then they heard it: the sound of the morning whaling whistle. It was the first human sound they had heard in 17 months. But still they had two tasks - to get their men off the other side of the island and the second crew off Elephant Island. The first task proved relatively easy with a whaler. But the first two attempts to reach Elephant Island were stopped by the ice. 
On the island, alone for over a month, the crew was desperate. Their leader, Frank Wild, got the men to pack every day in case the boat came for them. Many were insane. They had to cut one man's frozen toes off with no medicine or surgical instruments. Penguins were scarce and they dug up pieces of putrid seal meat and boiled the bones for food. Then one day they saw a ship. It was their leader, Ernest Shackleton, and his lifeboat crew. He had never given up his commitment to get all his men out alive. It had been 21 months since they had set off and not a life had been lost. The rescue ship took them to Chile, and from there, most returned home to England and World War 1. Shackleton, ever the restless explorer, set off on a new adventure in 1921. Ironically, having survived the most gruelling survival tale of the 20th century he died in Antarctica at age 47 of a heart attack. 
And what is the mark of Sir Ernest Shackleton? I think it is this. Human beings can survive incredible situations and hardships if they can keep their minds from giving in. Shackleton knew that as a leader, his first and most important job was to not allow his men to give up hope. He was a tough and disciplined leader, who never allowed his men to break ranks with the team. But ultimately he knew that attitude is at the root of all success, whether you're working in a cubicle in an office somewhere, or fighting for your life in the Antarctic ice. And while we cannot always control the circumstances of our lives, our attitude is something we all have control over. |
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Please visit us at www.themarkofaleader.com. Copyright 2007 Mark of a Leader |
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