Knowing history can sometimes be more important than you might think. Kim Hill was talking to someone on her Saturday national radio programme, and as an aside, the discussion veering onto the reason why Ernest Shackleton's South Pole venture resulted in everyone dying. The speaker put it quite bluntly, with words to this effect: "Everyone died, because Shackleton took five people, and enough food for four."Hilary Butler knows nothing about history. It was Scott and his men who died. Shackleton saved his men. Hilary Butler thinks she knows stuff about vaccines, which she thinks are a Bad Thing. Hilary Butler is a public nuisance.
Something most of us who have studied history, already know.
Monday, July 25, 2011
The Butler did it
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5 comments:
I recommend Endurance by Alfred Lansing. A fantastic account.
"For scientific leadership, give me Scott, for swift and efficient travel, Amundsen. But when you are in a hopeless situation, when you are seeing no way out, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton. Incomparable in adversity, he was the miracle worker who would save your life against all the odds and long after your number was up. The greatest leader that ever came on God's earth, bar none."
Sir Raymond Priestley
Member of the Nimrod expedition 1907-1909
Oh, and Shackleton's party was 27 (expanded to 28 with a stowaway). None were lost.
"Those of us who have studied history". What a fucking smug git.
That stowaway made one of the worst travel decisions in history.
Shackelton is famous for turning back to save lives: better a live donkey than a dead lion, he said when asked why. This several years before Scott headed south to his doom, as Tolkein would put it. Shackelton lived to save all his men in atrocious conditions in the southern seas. Unlike Scott who killed more men than most south pole explorers.
Wow Paul, that image is really an inspiration. Really makes you want to follow that example aye...
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