Opinion – Candido Bracher: Discovery of the Endurance ship brings hope that Zelensky will lift Ukraine out of the abyss

“I am just going outside and may be some time”.

With these words, Captain Lawrence Oates said goodbye to Commander Scott and two other companions with whom he shared the tent, in the intense blizzard at the end of the Antarctic summer in 1912.

Two months earlier, the group, which then had five members, had achieved the ambitious goal of reaching the geographic South Pole; that unique point on earth where, whichever way a person turns, they will always face north. But it was a bitter triumph, as when they arrived they found the Norwegian flag planted 33 days earlier by the explorer Amundsen. They had been beaten in the dispute to conquer one of the last unknown points on the planet.

The extent of the challenge becomes clearer if we know that the geographic South Pole is more than 2,800 meters above sea level and is about 1,300 kilometers from the coast. To cover this distance, ascend to the pole and return, facing the rigors of the Antarctic climate with the technology available at the time, it took more than three months and a complex logistics that involved the establishment of stores of provisions to be consumed on the way back, since it was impossible for the group to carry all the necessary supplies.

Dejected by defeat and impacted by the death of a comrade at the start of the return journey, the four remaining members faced storms that slowed their march. Uncertainty about the success of the return was compounded by the slowness of Oates, whose feet were plagued with gangrene and cold sores.

It is in this context that we must understand the phrase at the beginning of this text. Oates, as everyone tacitly expected, never returned to the tent and his phrase has gone down in history as an extreme example of chivalry and self-sacrifice. But his purpose was not attained; his three companions would starve to death a few days later, 17 kilometers from the next supply depot.

Three years earlier, in January 1909, another English explorer, Ernest Shackleton, had arrived with three companions just 150 kilometers from the geographic pole, already high on the plateau. Fearing that he would not have the necessary resources to reach the pole and complete the return trip, he decided to backtrack, contenting himself with the fact that he had beaten the pole proximity record to that date.

In a letter to his wife, Emily, he included a sentence that, although it lacks the elegance and drama of the one that opens this text, also has its dose of wisdom:”

I thought, dear, that you would rather have a live ass than a dead lion.”

Shackleton was persistent. If the South Pole had already been conquered, the challenge remained to cross it from one side to the other. This was the expedition he conceived and led three years after Amundsen’s conquest, known as the Endurance Expedition, after the ship that carried it.

But the crossing of the pole has not even started. The Endurance got stuck in the ice before reaching the starting point of the walking course. Shackleton and the 27 men accompanying him had to spend the Antarctic winter of 1915 immobilized, until the Endurance was crushed by the pressure of the ice and sank.

For months the group camped until they managed to get the lifeboats into the water and head to a deserted island, Elephant Island, from which Shackleton, with five companions in one of the boats, undertook an 800-mile voyage across the Drake Sea, one of the most dangerous of the five oceans, looking for help.

Arriving at the objective, with numerous mishaps, Shackleton provided the rescue of the companions who had stayed on Elephant Island, more than a year after the sinking.

All the men returned safely to Britain.

What turned a failed expedition from the point of view of its stated objective into an epic episode of survival was the leadership ability and concern for the safety of his men, which Schakleton had already demonstrated in 1909, when he abandoned the objective of reaching the pole. . In the Endurance expedition, he would take this quality of his to the paroxysm, having led his group in extremely adverse conditions, facing and overcoming insubordination, becoming an example of balance, courage and dedication.

In these dark days when the past seems to have come back to haunt us, when we witness in amazement a military invasion on European territory, with bombings on civilian populations and the barely veiled threat of an atomic conflict, the extraordinary discovery of Endurance preserved by the cold of the waters Antarctic abysses reminds us of this milestone in the human capacity to conquer through empathy, determination and fearlessness. It also brings the hope that Zelensky will have the same success as Shackleton and that it will soon be possible to hoist the region from the abyss to which it was designed.