Growing up my dad was a shipwreck buff, along with his passion for the Civil War and his teaching American Literature. When it came to fiction, Moby Dick loomed large in our house. But what we most often read aloud were tales of real ships going down off the Coast of Maine or real-life stories of open water survival for weeks and months.
Amidst the canon of shipwrecks the Endurance stands out as truly heroic. As in most cases, the tale began with arrogances and stupidity. Shackleton intended to walk across Antartica but never even got there because the ice locked his ship into place with winter coming well before landfall. But in shipwrecks, like in life, the most interesting and revealing part of the story is what happens after the catastrophic mistake.
Shackleton returned all 27 of his men alive after being frozen in place, hauling their boats across the ice, executing the most daring open water voyage in a life boat (600 miles in the roughest seas in the world with primitive navigation tools and no room for error in terms of heading) and then a climb across a glacial mountain.
As Nancy Koehn recently wrote in the New York Times:
As a historian at the Harvard Business School, I wrote a case studyabout him that has drawn more interest from executives than any other I have taught.
As some talented research assistants and I worked on the study, I was struck by Shackleton’s ability to respond to constantly changing circumstances. When his expedition encountered serious trouble, he had to reinvent the team’s goals. He had begun the voyage with a mission of exploration, but it quickly became a mission of survival.
Don’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad freeThis capacity is vital in our own time, when leaders must often change course midstream — jettisoning earlier standards of success and redefining their purposes and plans.
So what are we to make of the Costa Concordia disaster and Captain Schettino’s dereliction of duty? Not only did he not go down with his ship he drove it into rocks, jumped off, and refused to go back aboard even under direct orders from the Coast Guard while people were in fact dying (an American couple from Minnesota is still among the missing).
The Italians see the shipwreck, and the lack of leadership, as a metaphor for their broader collapse. There are those too who see the actions of Captain Schettino–coming on top of Captain Joe Hazelwood sleeping off a bender while the Exxon Valdez caused ecologically disaster–as a metaphor for what is wrong with men.
To those I would offer up Capt. Richard Phillips, who gave himself up to save his crew and was part of a heroic escape.
It is true that in general the sea has brought out the best in men, or at least those are the stories that get told over and over again to reinforce what it means to be a real man for us landlubbers. But there have always been those who acted just as horribly as others did bravely.
One that sticks in my mind involves the whaling ship Essex captained by George Pallard, a good Quaker (as is my family) from Nantucket. The sinking of the Essex in the Pacific Ocean by a sperm whale attack was the inspiration for Moby Dick. What Melville did not write about, however, was the fact that in the life boat starvation drove the men to draw lots to see who would be given up for food. Captain Pollard ended up eating his 17 year-old cousin, who had sworn to protect, when the boy drew the short stick. Pollard survived to have to face the boy’s mother when he returned to Nantucket.
Image of Earnest Shackleton with credit to: http://hilobrow.com/
One thing I can assure you is Shakleton Couldn’t move a boat across the ice alone.
It is shocking the loss of life considering the ship is so new, and the ship is so close to shore. Imagine the number of dead if the ship had been further out to sea. I wanted to quote the below, as it relates so much to our discussions on Manhood here on GMP. [Captain AND the Head of the Port Authority in Livorno, on the Italian Mainland] Mr De Falco wept with anger and frustration at the loss of life from the tragedy. The captain broke down in tears when he realised in the early hours of Saturday morning… Read more »
The novel “Lord Jim” by Joseph Conrad has everything that you need to know about this subject, and yes it involves a crew abandoning ship and deserting the passengers during a shipwreck. The movie adaptation with Peter O’Toole is pretty great too. Actually, there is very little about being a man that Conrad does not cover brilliantly in his books.
This is part of a greater problem where those in a position of power/privilege refuse to accept accountability for the actions of subordinates. (Note how the CEO of the shipping company is pushing all the blame on the Captain – did his company culture/training/operational demands contribute?) The UK use to be a great example (and still is at time) where ministers of the Crown would resign their post due to the actions of subordinates, because they were where “the buck stops”. (Japan is often a good example of this too) We live in a world where people crave authority but… Read more »
There’s a reason Romans told each other about Horatius at the Bridge for a thousand years. Ditto heroic sea stories. And other hero stories.
It’s how you’re supposed to behave if you draw the short straw, which you may.