The Lost Men

I just finished The Lost Men. I find it hard to complain about a little cold on my walks with Keller in the mornings now. What those men suffered for science and honor is beyond what most of us can fathom. Just being stuck in a hut for weeks and months on end after sledging thousands of miles in 35 below 0 weather is super human. The fact that they laid supply depots for the expedition that never set foot on the other side of Antarctica to meet them is such irony.

They risked their lives to make sure the men who they thought would need them would not perish on the transcontinental journey. That group's ship crashed before it ever landed and that group had to row over 500 (actually over 850) miles to safety through ice floes while leaving most of the crew on a uninhabited island (another story not told in this book but one I plan to search out). The Ross Sea Party (which is the account told in The Lost Men was stranded for almost 18 months (yes 1 1/2 years) after their ship was pulled to sea by the ice and the rudder crushed. They had no contact with the ship or the world (which was struggling through the first World War at the time). It was one cruel mishap on top of another. Just when you thought it couldn't get worse, it did. And most of them survived. That's the amazing story they lived to tell.

The book was written in an academic sense and full of first source references and corrections of previous accounts. Nonetheless, I found it very readable and engrossing. If you like real adventure and testing of the human spirit, then this one is for you.

See ya!