Borrowed by a yeti, no doubt.
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Exactly. I believe that they often had the rights sold to newspapers and magazines before the expedition and were vitally important financially. The photos were also important to support the subsequent (if they survived) speaking tours. These expeditions were hugely expensive and people like Shackleton would spend an incredible amount of time just getting funding from the government, very, very rich people and subscriptions.
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I don’t know that the glass plates could have survived being submerged for that long in salt water. I think it would be really interesting to find George Mallory’s camera he allegedly had with him on his assent of Mt. Everest to see if he actually made the summit before he died. In those cold, and relatively arid conditions on the mountain, exposed film in a camera would have a chance to survive and be developed.
It’s interesting to note in the Endurance expedition, although they abandoned the ship, and a lot of their stores of supplies, the ship didn’t sink right away and they were camping on the ice relatively close by, and a bunch of different sorties were made back to the wrecked ship to scavenge wood, rope, hardware, and a lot of food supplies before Endurance finally sank to the bottom.
It took almost a month for the ship to actually sink and disappear below the water after they officially abandoned it. It was actually “abandoned” and reboarded a few times before it was unsafe to remain on it and the hull was breached.
There’s a good book on the incident called Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing. It has the whole story, and pretty good photos from the expedition as well, including stuff on the ship before she sank.
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Another vote for this fantastic book! Captivating and wonderfully detailed. It benefitted from having multiple first-person accounts and a remarkable quantity of primary source material from which to draw.
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It’s a very approachable history book for history lovers and for people who may find the subject boring from reading other history texts. I find it amazing they were able to get any photos, much less develop them, with the circumstances surrounding the entire ordeal.
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He went as far down south as he could!
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Photos are difficult enough. Just from a technical perspective, I’m amazed they managed to take movies under those circumstances.
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