Stuck on Ice
When Shackleton directed the crew to abandon ship, it was a desperate time. The crew was really stuck. Again. But this time they didn’t have a ship for housing and comfort. They lacked a galley, and Shackleton put a limit on personal items they could save off the ship, a limit of two pounds each. The meteorologist, Leonard Hussey, had a zither-banjo to entertain the crew. Shackleton understood the dangers and low morale of being cut off from the rest of the world.
He learned from the case of the Belgica in 1897, the first purely scientific exploration to Antarctica. Stuck in ice like the Endurance, rife with scurvy and reeling from the death of the 5th Lieutenant and the ship’s beloved cat, the crew went almost mad from isolation. To avoid a similar dilemma, Shackleton insisted that Hussey play the instrument to remind the men of their humanity.
