Miraculously, they succeeded, landing on the west coast of South Georgia 16 days later in what was subsequently ranked as one of the greatest boat journeys ever accomplished. This permitted them to sail west in the most adverse weather conditions and to land eventually on Elephant Island, some 599 miles to the north of the Antarctic Peninsula and as grim and hostile a pieceīecause there was no chance that anyone would ever find them there, Shackleton took the desperate measure of picking five men and trying to sail one of the 22-foot lifeboats to South Georgia, which meant traveling 800 miles across the most formidable

For another six months the men drifted northward on floes 27 and forcing its crew to abandon ship with its three lifeboats. 15 the Endurance was locked in, 80 miles away, or a day's sail, from its port of destination to the south.Īs the pack ice bore the Endurance away to the north, it squeezed harder and harder, eventually crushing it on Oct. Soon surrounded by the sea ice that churned in an interminable clockwise circle in the Weddell Sea. Although Shackleton delayed his departure from South Georgia, an island east of the Falklands, until Dec. Ice conditions were unusually severe that year, with pack extending farther north than it had in anyone's recollection.

Telling, the terrifying details of the journey come as vividly to life as ever. The remarkable story of what happened to the expedition has been told in several previous books, most notably in Shackleton's classic account, 'South,' published in 1919 to help defray the cost of the project. To this end, he bought a 300-ton barquentine from a Norwegian shipyard, renamed it Endurance after his family motto, 'By endurance we conquer,' manned it with a mixed company of officers, scientists and seamen, 27 in all, and set 'The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition.'Īs Shackleton himself put it in the prospectus for his Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition: 'It will be a greater journey than the journey to the pole and back, and I feel it is up to the British nation to accomplish this, for we haveīeen beaten at the conquest of the North Pole and beaten at the conquest of the South Pole.' So writes Caroline Alexander in her stirring new account,

But to Sir Ernest Shackleton in 1914, the trans-Antarctic hike was one of the last remaining prizes in exploration. O cross the Antarctic continent from the Weddell to the Ross Sea on foot: in retrospect the project seems a little banal, maybe because we'veīeen spoiled by what exploration has accomplished in the meantime. Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition. 'The Endurance': Ice, Wondrous Even in the Face of DeathĭecemBOOKS OF THE TIMES 'The Endurance': Ice, Wondrous Even in the Face of Death By CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT

The Endurance by Caroline Alexander