HMS Erebus

HMS ‘Erebus’ Passing Through the Chain of Bergs,1842 by Richard Brydges Beechey || Oil on canvas, 78.8 x 111.76 cm || Collection: National Maritime Museum

I have talked about this episode separately when I went to see the exhibition in the British Museum (haven't blogged the photos yet…) but when I saw this painting, it was truly earth shattering.

Here’s the story of HMS Erebus. What an extraordinary story of exploration and discovery and and the truly tragic end of the brave ship and its men.

Salutations.

What They Left and What They Kept: What an Antarctic Expedition Can Teach You About What’s Truly Valuable

Kannu

This is a great article. Really boils down what you hold dear. 

Knowing what you can drop is very powerful son. People walk around with a huge amount of baggage. Travel light. All you need is inside your head and good health. Rest you can get back again. 

Love

Baba

What They Left and What They Kept: What an Antarctic Expedition Can Teach You About What’s Truly Valuable
http://www.artofmanliness.com/2013/10/07/what-they-left-and-what-they-kept-what-an-antarctic-expedition-can-teach-you-about-whats-truly-valuable/

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“Do you hear that? We’ll none of us get back to our homes again.”

Tom McLeod, member of the 1914 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, stood anxiously on the deck of the Endurance. He looked out on a nearby ice floe where ten Emperor penguins stood wailing a mournful cry. None of the ship’s twenty-eight member crew had seen such a large group of penguins gather together before, nor heard them issue such a strange and chilling sound. Surely, McLeod thought, this was a foreboding omen.

Ernest Shackleton, leader of the expedition, bit his lip. One did not have to be superstitious to feel the crew’s prospects were bleak. The Endurance had been stalled out for months, having become trapped in an ice pack as it sailed towards the South Pole. The crew’s aim was to launch an expedition that would traverse the Antarctic continent. But now the ice floes surrounding the ship had begun violently pinching and twisting it, tearing open holes in the hull through which freezing water poured. The men had worked for days in exhausting, round-the-clock shifts, pumping out the water by hand. But Shackleton knew their efforts were not enough to save the ship; the next day he ordered the Endurance abandoned. “She’s going boys,” he said. “I think it’s time to get off.”

What They Left and What They Kept: What an Antarctic Expedition Can Teach You About What’s Truly Valuable

Kannu

This is a great article. Really boils down what you hold dear. 

Knowing what you can drop is very powerful son. People walk around with a huge amount of baggage. Travel light. All you need is inside your head and good health. Rest you can get back again. 

Love

Baba

What They Left and What They Kept: What an Antarctic Expedition Can Teach You About What’s Truly Valuable
http://www.artofmanliness.com/2013/10/07/what-they-left-and-what-they-kept-what-an-antarctic-expedition-can-teach-you-about-whats-truly-valuable/

---

“Do you hear that? We’ll none of us get back to our homes again.”

Tom McLeod, member of the 1914 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, stood anxiously on the deck of the Endurance. He looked out on a nearby ice floe where ten Emperor penguins stood wailing a mournful cry. None of the ship’s twenty-eight member crew had seen such a large group of penguins gather together before, nor heard them issue such a strange and chilling sound. Surely, McLeod thought, this was a foreboding omen.

Ernest Shackleton, leader of the expedition, bit his lip. One did not have to be superstitious to feel the crew’s prospects were bleak. The Endurance had been stalled out for months, having become trapped in an ice pack as it sailed towards the South Pole. The crew’s aim was to launch an expedition that would traverse the Antarctic continent. But now the ice floes surrounding the ship had begun violently pinching and twisting it, tearing open holes in the hull through which freezing water poured. The men had worked for days in exhausting, round-the-clock shifts, pumping out the water by hand. But Shackleton knew their efforts were not enough to save the ship; the next day he ordered the Endurance abandoned. “She’s going boys,” he said. “I think it’s time to get off.”

FT.com / World - Russia plants its flag on North Pole seabed

quite interesting move actually. Reminds me of how the antartica treaty came about. The main itnerested countries came around and hammered out a treaty to share the ice continent equally. Mind you, the convention on the regulation of antartica's mineral resource activity has never come into force even thought it has been signed. Perhaps this is an opportunity for the United Nations to get involved and hammer out a good treaty to look after both the poles. Otherwise this has all the signs of a festering sore which will erupt the next time a country decides to go drill into some icy wastes for oil and gas.