Jeffrey Keeten's Reviews > The White Darkness

”For scientific leadership, give me Scott; for swift and efficient travel, Amundsen; but when you are in a hopeless situation, when there seems to be no way out, get on your knees and pray for Shackleton.”


Every time I see this photograph of Shackleton’s ship, the Endurance, frozen in the ice, I get a chill.

One of the most selfless acts in the history of exploration happened in 1908 when Ernest Shackleton made the decision to turn back from his goal of reaching the South Pole, a mere 97 nautical miles away. The Holy Grail was only a few days travel. It was all but within his grasp.

There was something more important to Shackleton than his own personal aggrandizement; it was the safety of his men. He calculated the status of the remaining supplies and determined that the risk to his men was too great to make it to the Pole and make it back safely...alive. He did the unthinkable, something few other leaders would have the courage to do; he turned back. He did not worry about the aspersions that would be cast at him for cowardice or the ridicule that his jeering competition would hurl his direction. He would much rather live with that than live with the deaths of his men.

I had to ask myself, would I have been courageous enough to make that decision, or would I have given an Antarctica version of the Henry the 5th speech at the Battle of Agincourt and pressed on? Being the first to reach the South Pole was what would insure immortality, turning back meant, in all probability, that someone else would have that honor. Roald Amundsen, the great Norwegian explorer, would reach it first in 1911.

Henry Worsley worshipped Shackleton. Whenever he was in a tight spot, he would think to himself, ”What would Shacks do?” which went well with another of his favorite sayings: ”Better a live donkey than a dead lion.”

So who was Worsley?

”Worsley was a retired British Army officer who had served in the Special Air Service, a renowned commands unit. He was also a sculptor, a fierce boxer, a photographer who meticulously documented his travels, a horticulturalist, a collector of rare books and maps and fossils, and an amateur historian who had become a leading authority on Shackleton.”

And why did David Grann write a book about Worsley?

”In 2008, he led an expedition to pioneer a route through the Transantarctic Mountains, reaching a point 98 miles (157 km) from the South Pole. The expedition commemorated the centenary of Shackleton's Nimrod Expedition. He returned to the Antarctic in 2011, leading a team of six in retracing Roald Amundsen's successful 870-mile (1,400 km) journey in 1912 to the South Pole, marking its centenary. In completing the route, he became the first person to have successfully undertaken the routes taken by Shackleton, Robert Falcon Scott and Amundsen. --Wikipedia”


I love this picture of Worsley. He broke off a tooth on a frozen candy bar.”

All of this led up to Worsley’s dramatic final expedition to be the first person to make a solo crossing of Antarctica, without any assistance. He had been restless. There was something about the polar regions that got in certain men’s blood, and they just couldn’t stay away. ”What is Antarctica other than a blank canvas on which you seek to impose yourself?”

The beauty is not what we usually think of, with oceans, mountains, and trees. From a bird’s eye view, there is nothing much there, except ice and snow and cold.”There is nothing to see but white darkness.”

Desolation is best expressed by deserts, the hot ones and the cold ones. I find photographs of deserts to be very peaceful, the more desolate the better. I find expeditions that venture out into that desolation, seeking what has never been seen before, to be invigorating. So I understand the obsession that gripped Worsley to keep going back again and again.

The landscape seduced his mind, like a woman who must be chased to be had.

This is a lovely, evocative book, filled with amazing photographs. David Grann knows how to tell a story, and you will find yourself tearing up with joy and pain, more than a few times, as you make these journeys with these brave men. The book also reminded me of all the polar expedition books I still have left to read. Fortunately, there have been many explorers who were as obsessed with those regions as were Shackleton and Worsley, and most of them, the ones who lived, wrote about their adventures. This book is a quick afternoon read, and hopefully, you will all be as seduced by the landscape as Shackleton, Worsley, and yes, even I.

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