Racing With Death: Douglas Mawson – Antarctic Explorer by Beau Riffenburgh (PDF)

Description

Scott, Shackleton and Mawson were the three great explorers of the Edwardian age. Now Beau Riffenburgh tells the forgotten story of Douglas Mawson and his death-defying expedition of 1911-14. A key member of Ernest Shackleton’s famous Nimrod Expedition, Mawson led his own Australasian Antarctic Expedition. However, following the tragic deaths of the other members of his sledging party, he was left to struggle the hundreds of miles back to base alone, only to find that the relief ship had sailed away, leaving him to face another year in Antarctica. Having survived with a small band of men against incredible odds, he later led a groundbreaking two-year expedition which explored hundreds of miles of unknown coastline. Mawson’s is a story of true heroism and a fascinating insight into the human psyche under extreme duress.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐I am Australian so I have a greater appreciation that his explorations laid rights to a territorial claim of land and water as extensive as the Australian continent itself. Hillary states that his exploration was the most dramatic and harrowing in history. A fine read. Like many heroes, his later years deteriorated into squabbles about money and bragging rights, but even that was fascinating!

⭐it is a great read. a lot of informational stuff

⭐Great story of exploration back in a time when exploring was crude and uncomfortable done by brave men. Makes you put yourself there and go through it with them.

⭐One thing a book like this makes you ponder is how your own inner strength would bare up under the pressure of such a survival situation: one party member dead down a crevasse, another died after becoming delirious beside you in the tent you are sharing on an Antarctic glacier after the two of you have had to one by one shoot your own dogs to feed yourselves, finally leaving you alone with days of marching through the white wasteland. Could you do it? Could you make yourself get up and trudge another day pulling a sledge you’d cut down with a pocket tool, walking on crampons you’d fashioned yourself out of nails and screws from whatever you could find? Or would you just curl up in a ball and let nature take its course?Another thing it makes you ponder is just how many skills the men on these expeditions had as opposed to most modern men. I’ve no desire to eat puppies or learn how to pull a sledge across a glacier, nor how to build a hut (even if it was pre-fabricated prior to the expedition) nor am I fussed on the discerning the finer points of survival biscuits but the general ‘handiness’ of the men on this expedition, the way they had to be able to do so many physical things such as basic carpentry, how to butcher animals and the like does make one realise how few people nowadays could come close to the level of survival skills displayed by almost all the chaps on these expeditions.And while I’m pondering the (im)ponderables another thing that struck a chord with me in relation to this book was the way there were still so many parts of the worlds surface remaining to be explored up until only a century ago. There were still places of such size and untouched wildness that men such as this could still find a way of making a name for themselves. That there were still such untrammelled parts of the world about. The instant temptation is to think that one hundred years or so after these events there are so few such places, and the people who go about in them so often have a film crew with them to document how daring and brave they are.All up Beau Riffenburgh has here compiled a riveting book that gets across the hardships that Sir Douglas Mawson faced on his various Antarctic adventures. He strikes a balance between detail and overview, he has not written a hagiography and the work comes across as balanced, Mawsons faults are not ignored, nor his sometimes fractious relations with his various ship captains. The herculean fortitude he displayed in leading his expeditions, his visionary zeal in terms of scientific enquiry and a desire to not only contribute to his nations well being but also to the overall body of scientific knowledge is well portrayed. Details are light in regards to his personal life, whether through little being known about it or due to the authors preference for it to be thus.The main issue with this book for those wanting to take it as a biography of Sir Douglas Mawson is that it is scant on details of his part in the 1907-1909 Nimrod expedition. There is of necessity a sketch of his life up until he started his exploring career but the Nimrod expedition is not included, presumably because it would have overlapped with the authors already published work on that expedition. Still, given the way the prose flows nicely in this work it probably just means that the average reader will turn around and purchase that book as well for a more complete picture. But it does mean perhaps that those wanting a single volume overview of the man and his life will have to look elsewhere. Though this book does delve into his fundraising efforts and also does discuss his later years and involvement in matters relating to the Antarctic after his personal involvement was no longer occurring.One boon for this book is the photography – a number of pages are given over to photographs of the expedition and they very much add to the whole. Latter day audiences are so used to the seeing Goretex clad adventure travellers and their expedition tents and attendant ice breakers and support crews and satellite phones etc etc that to see the way these guys went about their business is humbling.As for the less glamorous bits? Well the typeface is nice, the bibliography is extensive and probably worth a poring over and the index is useful. All up a good read and ideal for those interested in exploration, tales of hardship, the Antarctic or really anyone just wanting an adventurous story.

⭐For those who have an interest in the Heroic age of polar exploration, or for those who just like pure adventure, this biography is a must. Douglas Mawson’s first encounter with the south polar ice was with Shackleton’s Nimrod expedition in 1907-09, when with Edgeworth David and Mackay, he trekked to the south magnetic pole. Born in Douglas on the Isle of Man, but spending the greater part of his life in Australia, Mawson went on to lead a series of expeditions in Antarctica, discovering and exploring new ground and adding considerably to the scientific understanding of the region.Arguably, his contribution to the exploration of Antarctica, was equal to that of Scott or Shackleton or Amundsen, but for whatever reason, his name has not been immortalised, as has theirs. And yet, in 1914, he was deservedly knighted by George V.In this biography, Beau Riffenburgh seeks to redress the balance by highlighting Mawson’s remarkable achievements, and especially his first most spectacular trek with 2 companions, Innis and Mertz, which he finished alone, Innis having died in a crevasse and Mertz from apparent toxic poisoning. Mawson’s story of survival was truly incredible. Yet set against his achievements, Riffenburgh describes a man who did not appear to have the leadership qualities of Scott or Shackleton (albeit that those 2 men’s leadership styles were quite different). Piecing together, primary sources, a story is told of rifts and dissent within Mawson’s polar teams and dramatic and potentially life-threatening differences between Mawson and Davis, the captain of the expedition ship ‘Aurora’. It would appear that Mawson could be stubborn to the point of recklessness, and was not always good to know.Two points of criticism of the book. Riffenbergh makes little attempt to delve deeper into Mawson’s early life. By contrast, in his excellent biography of Scott, David Crane goes to great lengths to analyse what makes the man – to very great effect. I would like to have seen Riffenbergh make a greater effort to help the reader work out what it was that really made Mawson the man he was. And secondly, though the book contains 3 maps. it would have benefitted me to have had several more. I found it rather difficult to fully appreciate those sledging journeys which were amply described, but which lacked a map.However these criticisms are minor. Riffenbergh has done a very good job.

⭐This is a must read for all fans of the heroic era of Antarctic exploration. The stories of Scott, Shackleton and Amundsen are all well known and have been dramatised many times. This expedition, which took place at the same time as Scotts final tragic one, is equally spell binding in its story of tragedy and loss of young life. If you are not familiar with the story then I don’t want to spoil it for you here by going into further detail. Mawson’s fight for survival is truly astonishing and you only have to look at two of his photographs – one taken in a studio not long before his expedition, and the ones taken after his race with death – they look as though they were taken 20 years apart. In absence of a truly definitive biography of Mawson – a fascinating and complex man – this is a good alternative by an extremely able Polar historian – Beau Riffenburgh.

⭐As a fan of “Heroic Age” exploration, especially in Antarctica, I’ve read several books on Amundsen, Scott and Shackleton, and chose this book, from several on the same subject, as Mawson certainly seemed to be an under-rated member of this famous group. I can say that Mawson certainly lives up to such a high reputation, however flawed he too may have been, but this book is probably not the best one to read on him and his adventures in the far south. The author is rated as a first-class historian, but that may be the problem, as he can’t seem to distinguish in many cases between useless, repeticious, pointless, not to say boring, details that add little or nothing to the story, and the real human drama which gives the whole thing sense. He gives almost as many pages to telling us rather shallow and uninteresting information about arrangements in the expedition’s hut and what and how things were packed on the sledges (e.g., which pieces of the Primus were in which boxes and where they were put on the sledge…) as he does to Mawson’s most famous feat, his solo return to the base camp following his first sledge journey, fighting against titanic, indeed seemingly unsurmountable odds. This story does indeed make Mawson an heroic figure, much more than either Scott or Shackleton, especially as Mawson went on to do a lot of scientific work later on, as opposed to the tragic disasters of both Scott and Shackleton, which are really the only reasons we remember them today. I would frankly have expected a more feeling treatment, rather than what comes across more as just a chronological telling of the events. Of course, a so-called historian who starts off by saying that Scott, Shackleton and Mawson were the greatest exploreres of the Edwardian period, somehow completely forgetting Nansen and Amundsen, obviously has a rather skewered view of things. (He does get around to complimenting the two Norwegians, plus Sverdrup, around page 107 or so, but in a short subordinate clause, not even a full sentence!) By comparison, the books by Roland Huntford and Alfred Lansing, if at times somewhat sensational, certainly give a better idea of what it must have been like for the people involved, which is the true task of the historian. One interesting sub-product of this book, having read others on similar experiences, is to make one question the whole point of this type of exploration. The Victorian ideal of progess, of conquering the world, aided and abetted by strong nationalistic tendencies, apparently pushed many of these these men (Scott and Shackleton simply for personal glory, Amundsen and Nansen perhaps for something more) to go to extremes, the British especially ill-prepared and high with hubris that made them think they could overcome all obstacles. Mawson certainly shared some of these faults, along with others of his own, but he was undoubtedly also very dedicated. Differently from Scott, he planned carefully and learned from his mistakes, and better than Shackleton he equipped his team as adequately as possible for what they were to face. However, I think it is the best monument to his memory that he refused Scott’s insistence that he go with him to the South Pole, saying that he was interested in science, geology to be precise, and not just a glory-seeking stunt. Amundsend and Nansen were certainly better explorers in the technical sense, really in a class of their own (however little credit they usually get), but Mawson deserves the palm as the one with the best motivation. Read about him in some other book, though, not this one. He deserves a better job.

⭐interessante libro su una tragica e poco nota spedizione antartica: sicuramente un ottimo testo per gli appassionati del genere. OK

⭐

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