Most incredible human journey

Cafe Society
1

I am regularly amazed when I read stories of incredible feats of endurance by explorers and adventurers of times gone by. For example Shackelton’s voyage of the Endurance is nearly incredible, both for the fact that folks would willingly place themselves in such a situation, and then survive it. And Bligh’s amazing post-mutiny navigation boggles the mind.

I’m currently reading a book The Brutal Journey, concerning a 1527 Spanish expedition to exploit the riches of Florida. Well, suffice it to say, things didn’t go as planned. 600 conquistadors landed near Tampa Bay - eight years later 4 guys walked out of California into Mexico, having made their way along the coast to Texas, and then walked overland to California. At one point, they built a forge, melted down their armor to make tools, and constructed 4 (relatively) seaworthy boats capable of holding a couple of hundred people. If it were written as fiction it would be hard to believe!

So what are your nominations for the most incredible journeys taken by man - either voluntarily or as a result of circumstances? I would also appreciate citations to any well-written books documenting such journeys.

2

Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition is the one that always stands out in my mind.

3

Which of course you have already mentioned :smack:

4

Here’s a classic. Hugh Glass, wounded and unable to stand, crawls for months to reach safety :

5

The first two I thought of were Shackleton and Bligh.

I can’t find a good description online, but David Livingstone’s travels through Africa (exploring the Zambezi, searching for the source of the Nile, etc.) are pretty damned impressive. He left on his last trip in 1865, lost his medicine, animals and porters and continued on alone. He lost touch with the outside world for six years. For publicity, the New York Herald sent Henry Stanley to look for him. It took him 11 months to find him, in a town on the shore of Lake Tnaganyika. On his death in 1873, it took his attendants a year to carry his body back to London to be interred in Westminster Abbey.

It doesn’t get much more off-the-beaten-path than that.

6

Don’t worgy Mange, I did read the Shackleton mention in the OP, but was all prepared to mention it too upon first reading the thread title. But you gave the link so people can read what is certainly my vote for the most incredible human journey.

7

If you don’t mind fiction, you might enjoy Jack London’s The Call of the Wild and White Fang. Lots of cold weather travel/adventure stuff in there…

8

Not quite in the same league as Hugh Glass but Joe Simpson’s story of survival against the odds was pretty darn impressive.

9

How about the John King of the Burke and Willis expedition? Ultimately, it’s a story of incompetence, but the final result looms large in Australian history, and it was truly a tale of suvival under arduous circumstances – until a tragic twist at the end.

10

I came here to mention ol’ Hugh. As your Wikipedia link mentions, Man in the Wilderness was very loosely based on the incident. It is the only movie I can think of where the film’s story is smaller than true event on which it is based.

11

Shakleton’s is definitely one of the best.
How about Touching the Void?. While two men are climbing a mountain in the Andes, one of them breaks thier leg.
I saw this on TV and even though

You know they both live beacuse they are narrating the story

It still is a riveting and suspenseful thing to watch.
(I believe there is a book)

Similarly, that Everest story (Into Thin Air?)

Brian

12

OOh, looks like Joe Simpson’s story is Touching the Void
sorry for the dupe.

Brian

13

Not as impressive as other stories, but Aron Ralston’s story of having to break and amputate his own arm after it got trapped under a boulder is pretty amazing.

14

Well, for voluntary, how about the Lewis and Clarke expedition?

Or, a tad later, the Apollo 11 mission, on which humans first set foot on another world?

15

Some posters have mentiened Bligh and the Bounty, Caroline Alexander (who also wrote a very good book on Shacleton), wrote a book called The Bounty. Bligh and a few of the officers sailed (iirc) several thousand miles, from somewhere east of Tahiti back to Austrailia, with no instruments or charts, relying only on Bligh’s memory of the charts and a previous voyage he made several years earlier.

Also, Jonathan Krakauer’s Into Thin Air was mentioned (Mount Everest). One of his other books is also quite compelling, Into the Wild. The story of a young loner who hikes into Denali and dies.

Another good one might be Nando Parado’s Miracle in the Andes. This is the story that was originally told in the book Alive, but Parado is one of the rugby players to survive the crash in the Andes who made the long trek down the mountain to find rescue.

16

I saw this on PBS.
It is a documentary about the first ‘road trip’. (actually there was quite a bit of off road driving.)

The first guys to drive from one side of the US to the other. It was an incredible adventure. Many people that saw them along the way also saw their first car. The fact that this trip, actually sets precedents for road trips is incredible. You need to see this.

Check out the book cover.

Drive across country in that.

17

PBS showed a Ken Burns production of this extrordinary trek, The Journey of the Corps of Discovery a couple of years ago. It is available on DVD too.

18

Dinsdale, is that the one by Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca? There was a XIXth century edition of his book at Grandma’s, I don’t know which of my uncles has it.

The Magellan/Elcano expedition must have been incredible, but my bro gave me a biography of Magellan last Christmas and it grates on my nerves a lot, so I can’t recommend it (if the author’s soapbox was any taller he’d need oxygen).

Columbus’ first trip too and I’d love a good raccount of the expedition that did that thing with the ships… lemme see if I find the name… can’t find it and I’m afraid my memory got burned out years ago, sorry. Anyway, some Spaniards who brought ships to the Caribbean coast, dismantled them and carried them over the mountains to the Pacific. Having been in the area, I’m convinced they must have been from my part of Spain, it’s absolutely our kind of crazy.

There’s a new book out by the author of Like water for chocolate, about Cortés wife*. It’s called Malinche. I am SO asking for it for Christmas!

*yes, I know there wasn’t a wedding. Nobody has called her his “concubina” but his “mujer” for 400+ years and I’m not about to start, though.

19

The book I just finished reading was new, based largely on the 2 survivors’ accounts - one by de Vaca, and the other a joint account. Brutal Journey added a lot of historical material concerning the politics and economics behind such 16th century Spanish new world explorations, as well as anthropological material to help fill out the survivors’ accounts.

One of the 4 survivors was the Moroccan slave of another. After 8 years of starving and slogging through swamps, deserts, and mountains, when they regained society, he was again the other guy’s slave - and was sold. Bummer!

I remember reading some books on the African explorers a while back. May need to revisit them. Unimaginable hardships as I recall. My favorite is the guys who would bring their wives along, as tho it was a pleasant excusion to the country!

And I have never been able to get my mind around what convinced the polar explorers to willingly go through what they did…

Made of strerner stuff than I!

20

One you might like…its called “AS FAR AS MY FEET WILL CARRY ME” (by J. M. Bauer). It’s the tale of some prisoners in Stalin’s Gulag (in eastern Siberia). they escaped, and walked across Asia to freedom. I’ll have to re-read it.