Opinion: Rescued Antarctic Group Aren't Heroes
On their Spirit of Mawson expedition blog, one passenger signed off on December 28: "It's Saturday and it's bar-time (bar opens at 6 pm), so I am going to leave it here."
They even seemed to relish their crisis. The BBC quoted Tracy Rogers, the team's marine ecologist, as saying, "It's fantastic—I love it when the ice wins and we don't. It reminds you that as humans, we don't control everything ... We've got several penguins watching us, thinking 'What the hell are you doing stuck in our ice?' The sky is a beautiful grey—it looks like it wants to have a bit of a snow. It's the perfect Christmas, really."
For many seasoned adventurers, the team's attitude was hard to swallow. It seemed to betoken a new kind of entitlement, in which folks who get into serious trouble take it for granted that other people will risk their lives to save them. (Related: "Best Pictures From Dramatic Antarctic Ship Rescue.")
