Originally published at: Shackleton abandoned food to save this footage of the Endurance before it sunk | Boing Boing
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In this instance, the Captain did not go down with the ship.
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I assume it was needed in order to make a successful claim with the ship’s insurer…
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They took the Scotch along, too, for medicinal purposes I’m sure.
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The very first thing that happened when I arrived at the South Pole a few years ago was that I ate dinner while the NOVA episode about Shackleton’s journey was played on the TV set. I wondered why, was it to scare us? Then I realized that I was staying on a ship mired in the ice, just as their crew was.
But they didn’t have LC-130s arriving on a regular basis.
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Too bad Hurley didn’t leave the rejected plates on the ship, where they could eventually (it turns out) be retrieved.
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Visiting the huts and camps of the polar explorers were some of the most moving experiences I had on the Ice. The mummified seal carcass and all of those tins and packages!
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priorities, man!
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These guys who let lost for years at the two Poles, wander around surviving on meagre rations … everything that is against them… yet they lived.
Next time you find yourself in a hopeless situation… those crews made it, so can you.
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I think that’s only if there are other people on the ship still. Nearly everyone survived the destruction of the Endurance.
Mrs Chippy and the sled dogs didn’t count as people though.
McNish was very attached to Mrs Chippy and never forgave Shackleton for having him killed.
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Yes, but the plates were ‘hermetically sealed’ a hundred years ago, which probably doesn’t mean what they wanted it to mean. A hundred years of seawater under pressure can get into damn near anything.
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I think the widely accepted expectation is “Captain is the last one to leave” rather than “Captain stays on board no matter what.”
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Glass negatives are delicate things under even the best circumstances. Dropped to the bottom of the ocean? Likely would have been unusable within hours to days. Even if hermetically sealed like the ones that got saved, I doubt they would have survived for more than a few years.
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Aye, the duty of the captain is to ensure no one else goes down with the ship. To be the last one to go from board. It’s a ship’s owners who make the loss of a ship more important than the life of the captain, really.
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Time travel goals-go back and steal the plates before they can be destroyed.
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It seems like it was a good decision to me. Also hardly the first time that expeditions in similar circumstances had prioritized the preservation of media. The Andree Expedition for one, where film was shot and preserved all through a terrible ordeal, where everyone died; the de Gerlache expedition where a surviving group made it out come to mind.
Even in the late nineteenth century, expedition organizers were pretty canny about selling media rights; and since those who join expeditions ttend to have the belief that they’ll survive, they probably tend to visualize any situation as one where, eventually, they can redeem the value of their ordeal – and that depends on making good providing the media that they promise…
Donald Crowhurst fastidiously recorded his voyage for the BBC on a 16mm camera, even well past the point where his outlandish deceit had reached the point of no return…
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Perhaps… but Shackleton’s land-based career involved speaking engagements which needed to be fortified with photos and film.
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Be glad they didn’t torch the ship to warm themselves before starting their journey.
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A captain’s first duty is to the safety of crew and passengers, not some romantic notion of honor.
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George Mallory and his partner Andrew Irvine disappeared on Everest in 1924. When Mallory’s body was found in 1999 there was great excitement that his camera might be found nearby. It’s a very long shot, but just possible, that the film could still be developed and show that he and Irvine had reached the summit, the first to do so. So far, though, the camera is still missing.
