Incidentally, I've been reading about the Shackleton "Endurance" expedition. It looks like both currently popular movies about it, including the IMAX one some of us saw, sanitized the story fantastically, just like everyone does with the famous Scott expedition. Here are some Conspiracy Theory Corner Tidbits (only this time, the conspiracy theory is the fact and what everyone "knows" is the falsehood; Rachel's favorite type) -

The movies completely ignore or only hint at facts like: Much like Starkweather, Shackleton was less a victim of bad luck than of his own lunacy and idiocy, and in fact he had been told repeatedly by experts, whalers, and his own sailors that the ice was particularly bad that year and his ship was certain to be trapped if he pressed on. He did. It was. It turns out that Shackleton's nervous breakdown on his first Antarctic expedition, rather than being the minor incident the movies gloss over, was in fact indicative of his stability and behavior throughout the second expedition as well - from his asking his men bizarre and inappropriate questions at the initial interview to attempting (again, Starkweather-like) to somehow *bluster* his way through the pack ice, to staying pretty much permanently drunk once the ship went down.

His men, rather than loyally following "The Boss" throughout, as the official stories seem to indicate, actually nearly held an insurrection and mutiny on the grounds that he had flipped his lid, even though success would have gotten them hanged upon their return. Shackleton only managed to put it down at gunpoint.

When Shackleton returned on the Yelcho to pick up his men on Elephant Island, they are generally portrayed as a ragged but cheery bunch, but in fact some of them had had to undergo amputations without anaesthetic due to frostbite. The official stories also, incidentally, tend to fail to mention Shackleton's mistress on South Georgia Island (one of many), or the fact that there was a stowaway on board the ship who ended up trapped on the ice with the rest of them (why on earth did they skip over all of the interesting stuff?) On Shackleton's next expedition to the ice, he died. (To give him his due, his incredible bravery and sheer blind luck generally managed to get his men out of the scrapes he had gotten them into . . . you know, Starkweather is based on this guy, isn't he.)

Oddly, nothing I've read ever puts the expedition in the larger social context - I wonder why. The expedition left in 1914 and returned in 1917. How must they have felt upon their return to discover that, while they had survived what they thought was the ultimate danger down on the ice, their countrymen who stayed home in "safety" died in the millions upon millions, their lives pissed away in the trenches of World War I? It seems almost . . . Cthulhian in its irony.