Towards the end of part two, Shackleton called for an attempt to move the three salvaged boats from the Endurance to the end of the massive floe they were on. The dogs and the crew struggled and moved away from their camp all for naught because of treacherous conditions on the ice ahead. Forced to retreat and make camp, the crew is now demoralized, and the strain is beginning to show in the crew's mood. The feelings of defeat, anxiety to reach open water, and the time they have been stranded all led more provocative tensions and clashes based on personal ego. Shackleton once told Orde-Lees to leave slaughtered seals behind on the basis that they had enough food: "Shackleton contended that the party already had a month's supply, and ordered that the slain seals be left where they were." This decision initially caused confusion among the crew. Did Shackleton make a rash decision? If that is so, he never reverted it. This decision sparked deeper rifts later on when the camp nearly ran out of rations and resorted to hunting small adelie penguins. The crew secretly criticized Shackleton for not allowing them to bring in as much food as they could.
What was Shackleton's
motivation in turning down the procurement of those three seals? Did he believe that the crew would be in the boats within a month based on an optimistic megalomania? Lansing mentioned that Shackleton's deep sense of optimism clouded his realistic judgment at times. This reminded me of the plot behind Back to the Future when Marty traveled to 1955 thinking that he had enough plutonium to generate the energy needed to travel back to 1985; instead, there was not enough to travel back, leaving him stranded in 1955. Both Shackleton and Marty were optimistic in completing their goals, but that optimism led to a desperate situation because of a single rash decision.
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