Shackleton's Amazing Voyage

Nathan Stam
Children/Communications Pastor

Part Six in a series of Thanksgiving Blogs...

Let's take a two-part look at the last word-picture in Psalm 107:

One of my favorite books in the past few years is called Endurance by Sir Alfred Lansing. It's the true account of Shackleton's amazing voyage to the Antarctic in 1914-1916. Shackleton and his crew of twenty-seven men became stuck in the ice and had to abandon the ship, which eventually sank. This would not be heartening for a sailor I don't believe:

They were stuck on the ice, but eventually made their way to Elephant Island. Their only hope for rescue was to get to a whaling station on South Georgia Island so Shackleton and five of his men boarded the James Caird (one of their three remaining lifeboats) and proceeded to attempt the crossing of one of the roughest stretches of water in the world. Here's a photo of the James Caird:

Not only were they in this tiny boat that was in constant peril of capsizing, but all they had for the journey to navigate to South Georgia Island was a sextant, which is not easy in calm waters much less the stormy and incredibly rough South Atlantic.

In fact, two of the men would hold the navigator up over their shoulders while he tried to sight the sun. The horizon could only be estimated. Over the seventeen day, eight hundred nautical mile journey they were only able to take four readings because of the ocean and the weather. The slightest mistake could have caused them to miss the island. Amazingly, they made it and not one man was lost. Check out the route of the James Caird (and you can see where they drifted on the ice as well, previously):

When I was reading verses 23-32 of Psalm 107 I couldn't help but be reminded of this part of Shackleton's voyage! A lot of commentators say that the most beautiful, the most poetic, and certainly the most stirring section of Psalm 107 are the verses that describe the peril of God's people while at sea. It might have been descriptive of the difficult sixty-five day, late-fall cross of the turbulent North Atlantic by the Pilgrims as well.

Stay tuned tomorrow as we dive into the text of this fourth word-picture!