With the recent discovery of the Endurance—which sunk 107 years ago and currently lies remarkably well preserved at the bottom of the Weddell Sea—now is the perfect time to discuss Alfred Lansing's classic book about the ship's last journey. Published in 1959, Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage tells the whole story in captivating detail. It follows the British explorer Ernest Shackleton as he launches his Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, which aimed to send a group of adventurers across the Antarctic continent, from west to east, on foot. He, along with 27 crewmen and 69 sled dogs, left London on 1 August 1914. They arrived on South Georgia Island a few months later. On 18 January 1915, Endurance became hopelessly mired in thick polar ice. As the vessel slowly begin to sink into the frozen depths, the men were forced to abandon ship. As their vessel disappeared, they found themselves utterly alone in "a place where no man had ever been before, nor could they conceive that any man would ever want to be again" (104).

Knowing a cache of food and supplies had been left on Paulet Island, some 346 miles away, the men had little choice but to trek off to find it. Any chance of rescue was even farther afield. The journey that ensued was a remarkable one, fraught with danger of every kind. In spite of a constant battering by severe weather, lack of adequate food, physical exhaustion, and mental fatigue, remarakably, not one of the men perished. They all lived to tell the tale—and what an amazing one it is!

Lansing describes their entire journey in vivid prose, allowing the reader to trudge in the men's footsteps, feeling the excitement of discovery as well as the misery of being constantly wet, cold, dirty, overworked, bored, and tired. Although I would have liked to know more about Shackleton himself (his childhood and personal life are almost wholly ignored in the book), I found Endurance to be a riveting account of his Antarctic expedition. It's narrative non-fiction at its best, bringing history to life in a way that is not just fascinating, but also engrossing and impactful. I couldn't stop reading this iconic book.

Back in November, I published a Top Ten Tuesday post about my macabre love for stories about maritime disasters. Lark recommended Ghost Ship: The Mysterious True Story of the Mary Celeste and Her Missing Crew by Brian Hicks as one I might enjoy. Lark never steers me wrong, so I eagerly sought out a copy of the book. I'd heard of the Mary Celeste, vaguely, but really didn't know her story, which goes a little something like this:

Originally named Amazon, the Mary Celeste was a 100-foot long brigantine built in Nova Scotia in 1860-61. "A simple but handsome sailing ship" (19), she was designed to carry cargo and be manned by a small crew. Some believe the craft was cursed from the start as she seemed to have more than the usual number of mishaps over the course of her lifetime. Bedeviled or not, the ship became widely known in 1872. Rechristened as Mary Celeste in 1869, it was chartered in 1870 by a German businessman to carry 1700 barrels of industrial alcohol from New York City to Genoa, Italy. Captain Benjamin Briggs, who would be at the helm, brought his wife and their 2-year-old daughter along on the journey. Seven crewmen were also aboard when the craft left New York Harbor on November 5. About a month later, the ship was spotted floating aimlessly in the middle of the North Atlantic by the crew of the Dei Gratia. No one was steering the craft. Nor was anyone on board. Such "ghost ships" were seen fairly frequently on the high seas for a variety of reasons. What made this one different was that no one who had been on board was ever heard from again. A variety of strange things—like the fact that all of the men's foul weather gear, which would have been worn if they abandoned ship in a vicious storm, was still on the Mary Celeste—gave rise to theories of every kind. Had there been a mutiny on board? Did pirates descend on the ship, killing everyone in sight? Was it all an elaborate insurance scam? Could it have been aliens? Sea monsters? A Bermuda Triangle-ish disappearance? What really occurred to those ten doomed souls?

Ghost Ship is a fascinating book about an intriguing unsolved mystery. Hicks offers a compelling, well-researched account of the incident, including both the known facts and the fictions that grew out of the strange tale. His emphasis on the ship's captain and his seafaring family makes the story especially intimate and personal. I also thought the sections about how the tale of the Mary Celeste changed over the years and became part of supernatural/Bermuda Triangle/alien lore were especially interesting. Because of all these elements and more, I found Ghost Ship to be an engrossing, well-told tale that kept me eagerly turning pages. 

(Readalikes: I've read a lot of books about maritime disasters, but never one about a real mysterious, unsolved maritime mystery, so I'm not sure what to compare this one to. Any ideas?)

To the FTC, with love: Another library fine find

Everyone who visits BBB regularly knows I love a gripping, immersive survival story. If it's true? Even better. As we all well know, not everyone in the infamous Donner Party lived to tell the group's grisly tale, but enough did that we have a pretty good idea of what happened that fateful winter in 1847

when they became stranded in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. While cannibalism is what they became known for, there is a lot more to their story. Who were the people in the Donner Party? Where were they headed? How did they lose their way and become perilously trapped in the snow? Why did they resort to eating the flesh of their family members and friends? If you can stomach the more macabre details, theirs is a truly fascinating story. Daniel James Brown tells it well in his engrossing account, The Indifferent Stars Above.

Brown became interested in researching the Donner Party when he discovered he was distantly related to one of its members, a young woman named Sarah Graves Fosdick. She accompanied her parents, her eight younger siblings, and her new husband on the journey from Illinois to California. Brown decided to use her viewpoint to tell the stories of a group of travelers whom he says "deserve better" than to be remembered only as clichéd pioneers who were forced to make a horrible, desperate choice in order to survive an utterly hopeless situation. Brown describes the whole tragedy from beginning to end in a manner that is sensitive, compelling, and illuminating. With all the elements that make for great fiction—an extreme setting, interesting characters, nail-biting tension, and constant conflict of multiple varieties—it's a riveting read. Narrative non-fiction at its best.

Did you know that each year in the United States about 600,000 people go missing?  Most vanish in populated places.  The majority of them are found alive and in a short amount of time.  While these statistics are comforting in a way, the one Jon Billman is concerned about is this—around 1600 people are currently missing from North America's public lands (including national parks, national forests, and BLM land).  And this, Billman says, is likely a vast understatement.  For various reasons, hundreds go missing on federal land every year; many are never found.  

In The Cold Vanish, the writer uses the story of Jacob Gray (link contains spoilers)—a 22-year-old from California who disappeared in Washington's Olympic Peninsula while on a solo bicycling trip—as a springboard to explore these disappearing acts.  Who is most likely to vanish on public land?  Why?  And what is being done to locate the missing?  Billman discusses obstacles to finding people in the wild (vast acreage, inclement weather, difficult terrain, bureaucratic red tape, etc.) as well as the lengths that volunteers (including a group of dedicated Bigfoot hunters) have gone to to find missing hikers, bicyclers, and explorers.  Since so many of the circumstances surrounding these disappearances are strange, even inexplicable, Billman also talks about the more out-there explanations embraced by some: aliens, Sasquatch, and other otherworldly explanations.  The levity of this discussion is over-balanced, however, by those about how a missing persons investigation affects the family and friends who are left behind with no answers and no closure.  It's heartbreaking. 

Although there has apparently been a bit of a hubbub over Billman's portrayal of Jacob Gray, including some "facts" of the case that Billman may have gotten wrong, I found his coverage of Jacob's case to be both sensitive and absorbing.  On the whole, The Cold Vanish is very informative, compulsively readable, and highly compelling.  Also, sad and disturbing.  Although I read the book quickly, what I learned has stayed with me.  Haunted me.  My biggest takeaway: always maintain a healthy respect for Mother Nature, which will kill you just as soon as cradle you.  When exploring, stay on established paths, don't venture out alone, take a cell phone, and always—always—be prepared with emergency supplies.  Not doing any one of these, as Billman so clearly points out, can be deadly.

*Thanks to Lark for recommending this book to me.  You can see her excellent review of The Cold Vanish here.

(Readalikes:  Reminds me of books by Jon Krakauer, especially Into the Wild, as well as Carried by Michelle Schmidt and Angie Taylor)

To the FTC, with love:  Another library fine find