{"id":101767,"date":"2019-02-26T10:52:06","date_gmt":"2019-02-26T16:52:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/?p=101767"},"modified":"2021-09-25T12:18:48","modified_gmt":"2021-09-25T17:18:48","slug":"the-libraries-of-famous-men-ernest-shackleton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/leisure\/books\/the-libraries-of-famous-men-ernest-shackleton\/","title":{"rendered":"The Libraries of Famous Men: Ernest Shackleton"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Welcome back to our series on the libraries of famous men<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n

Part of explorer Ernest Shackleton\u2019s genius for leadership<\/a>, was how keenly he understood the way in which <\/span>idleness can destroy men\u2019s morale<\/a>. Thus when his ship, the <\/span>Endurance<\/em>, became stuck in pack ice en route to a planned Antarctic expedition, he didn\u2019t let his men simply sit on their hands. Instead, he charged them with daily maintenance tasks, organized games of football, hockey, and soccer on the ice outside the ship, and encouraged the keeping of daily diaries. As a help in biding the time, Shackleton also lent members of the crew books from his personal library, the exact contents of which were unknown, until recently.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Shackleton's<\/a>

Hurley took this photograph of Shackleton’s cabin in March 1915, two months after the Endurance became trapped in ice.<\/p><\/div>\n

Two years ago, when pictures taken by the expedition\u2019s photographer, Frank Hurley, were digitized and restored by the Royal Geographical Society, it became possible for the first time to clearly make out the titles of the books Shackleton kept in his shipboard cabin. We now know his field library contained quite a mix of genres, including a set of encyclopedias, popular and classic novels, collections of poetry and quotations, manuals of grammar, several dictionaries, and accounts of other polar expeditions.  <\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, most of these volumes never returned from the waters around Antarctica. When after an almost 10-month state of suspension the ice surrounding the Endurance <\/em>began to shift and twist, splintering its hull, the crew was forced to abandon ship. Shackleton\u2019s original plan was to march with lifeboats and supplies across the ice, in order to launch out to open water. Given that the trek would be arduous, he ordered his men to travel light<\/a>: each member of the team was allowed just the clothes on his back, plus two pairs of mittens, six pairs of socks, two pairs of boots, and a sleeping bag. Beyond these basic provisions, each man could only bring a maximum of two pounds of personal possessions.<\/p>\n

While most of Shackleton\u2019s library could not be brought along, he did encourage his men to take one of his books if it fell under their weight allowance.<\/p>\n

Shackleton himself tore out the flyleaf of his Bible, upon which Queen Alexandra had inscribed a prayer for his safety, as well as the pages for Psalm 23 and Job 38:29-30 (\u201cOut of whose womb came the ice? and the hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it? The waters are hid as with a stone, and the face of the deep is frozen.\u201d), before laying the rest of the book down on the ice.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, he took one more piece of inspiring literature with him before beginning a harrowing journey to safety that would last for another 10 months and nearly 1,000 miles, and take him through freezing 80-foot waves, beneath soaking squalls of rain and snow, and over steep glaciers, jagged mountain peaks, and impassable cliffs — a piece you can see hanging on the left wall of his cabin and which couldn\u2019t be more apropos: the poem \u201cIf,\u201d by Rudyard Kipling<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ernest Shackleton’s Expedition Library<\/h3>\n

\"Ernest<\/a><\/p>\n

The contents of Ernest Shackleton’s library aboard the Endurance<\/em>, assessed through an examination of the photograph above of his cabin, was first reported by the BBC<\/a>:<\/p>\n