Greatest Survival Stories

I recently read South by Ernest Shackleton, an incredible story of survival in the Antarctic. In 1914 Shackleton and a team of 28 scientists and sailors embarked on an expedition to cross Antarctica, which Shackleton judged as the last important polar mission after Amundsen became the first to reach the South Pole in 1912. Their boat, the Endurance, became trapped in ice in the Weddell Sea, drifted helplessly for months and was finally crushed at 69 degrees latitude, forcing the crew to abandon ship. They drifted further on ice floes for hundreds of miles until their floe broke up beneath them and they scrambled into lifeboats. They landed on mountainous, ice-covered Elephant Island, 550 miles southeast of Cape Horn. From there, Shackleton took a crew of five others in the lifeboat James Caird for a fifteen-day journey to South Georgia. They weren't done once they landed on the south side of the island, however, because the whaling stations were on the north side. After regaining their strength, Shackleton's team walked for 36 sleepless hours over glaciers and through dense fog to the whalers, who would help the expedition rescue the remaining crew on Elephant Island.

Shackleton's story has been billed as the greatest survival story of all time, and I don't doubt it. What makes it so impressive is the length of time spent away from civilization (21 months for those left on Elephant Island) and the harsh conditions endured (hurricane-force winds and blowing snow were common, and temperatures were typically tens of degrees below zero Fahrenheit). What really makes the story, however, are the navigation, leadership, and decision-making skills of Shackleton and his lieutenants. Every member of Shackleton's Weddell Sea Party survived the ordeal, not by luck or fate, but by always keeping their wits and positive attitude despite unimaginable physical challenges.

This got me thinking about whether other survival stories could rival Shackleton's. Here are snippets of a few more incredible tales, most of which have associated books that I intend to read at some point:

1) Joe Simpson's "hop and crawl" back to base camp in the Peruvian Andes, recounted in Touching the Void. Simpson broke his leg descending from the nearly 21,000 foot Siula Grande. His partner Simon Yates proceeded to belay Simpson down the mountain, but Simpson went over a cliff and Yates was forced to cut the three-hundred foot rope separating the pair. Simpson fell into a crevasse and was presumed dead by Yates. Miraculously, however, Simpson survived by landing on an ice shelf and over three days struggled back to base camp.

2) Alexander Selkirk survived for four years on the Juan Fernández islands off the coast of Chile. He was left there in 1704 by his boss Thomas Stradling after he starting causing trouble on their ship Cinque Ports. Selkirk's story was the likely inspiration for Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, which I also recently read.

3) Antarctica is not surprisingly a survival adventure hotspot. In 1911, a few years before Shackleton's cross-Antarctica attempt, Douglas Mawson and two colleagues Xavier Mertz and Belgrave Ninnis were sledding over the icy continent when Ninnis along with most of the group's provisions and dogs fell through into a huge crevasse, killing all but one dog that managed to hang on to a shelf 50 m down. Mawson and Mertz continued back to their base, eating dog meat and liver to survive. Mertz went crazy, fell into a coma, and died. Mawson made it back to the base to find that their ship had departed hours before, forcing him and a few companions left behind to spend the winter in the Antarctic. The experience is recounted in Mawson's Home of the Blizzard.

4) In 1971 Juliane Koepcke was aboard a flight from Lima, Peru to Pucallpa in the Amazon rainforest. The plane encountered a storm and a fuel tank was hit by a bolt of lightning, tearing the right wing off the plane. Ninety one people on the plane were killed except Koepcke, who was somehow ejected from the plane as it broke up 2 miles over the forest canopy. Still sitting in her row of seats, she spun through the air like a helicopter blade and suffered only minor injuries upon landing. She walked down crocodile and piranha-infested streams for 10 days, finally being rescued by Peruvian lumberjacks. Koepcke's story has been made into two films including Werner Herzog's Wings of Hope.

5) The following year another plane crash miracle happened in the Andes. A flight carrying 45 rugby team members crashed in the mountains when a strong headwind and clouds caused the pilot to miscalculate his position. Twenty-seven people survived, but the search for the white plane in white snow was called off after eleven days, as the survivors heard on a radio. There were no animals or vegetation on the mountain, so after the few chocolate bars they had were gone, the only option was to eat flesh from those killed in the crash. Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa hiked for 12 days across the mountains to alert a Chilean cowboy. Fourteen remaining survivors at the crash site were rescued by helicopter, two and half months after the crash. Alive: The story of the Andes Survivors by Piers Paul Read tells the story. In 2006 Nando Parrado published his personal account Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home.

Interesting that all of these occur in the southern hemisphere and 4 out of 5 in South America. Anyway, some exciting and inspiring reading material for the next few months.