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The expedition led by Ernest Shackleton in 1914 was ill fated, but its story goes down in the annals of history as one of the greatest feats of survival ever known to humankind. Having heard that the Norwegian Roald Amundsen had reached the South Pole in 1911, just thirty five days before the heroic but tragic Robert F. Scott, Shackleton surmised that a crossing of Antarctica from sea to sea remained the one true great challenge left. He was determined that the feat would be accomplished by the British, to make up for the disappointment of Scott.
He set sail in a ship that he himself had bought, which he named the ‘Endurance’, on August 8, 1914, with a crew of twenty-seven. This crew comprised both seamen and scientists, the latter of which were to study the uncharted territory they were about to explore. That winter happened to be one of the coldest ever, so conditions were not ideal, but the explorers pressed ahead regardless. The plan was to cross from the Weddell Sea to McMurdo Sound in the Antarctic, and another crew aboard the ‘Aurora’ were already laying down stores in the latter area, for use by Shackleton and his men.
The ‘Endurance’ was a tantalising eighty miles short of her destination, when she was trapped in the pack ice. This fact was unbeknown to the crew of the ‘Aurora’, who diligently continued to lay the required stores. It came at a price though; several lives were lost in the bleak surroundings, including the captain of the ship, Aeneas Mackintosh.
Shackleton and his men did not panic. Rather, they set about planning for a long term of survival aboard the ship. All seemed well for a year, but then, perhaps inevitably, the ‘Endurance’ began to sink, a cause of the huge amounts of pressure exerted by the ice. All the crew escaped onto a drifting ice flow, and for the next five months this inhospitable landscape was to be their home. In sub zero temperatures, and blowing gales, the men camped and waited to be rescued.
A rescue party never materialised though. However, hopes were raised when the ice broke, to reveal running water. The team, led by Shackleton, quickly boarded lifeboats that they had salvaged from the ship, called whaleboats. The seas were stormy and unrelenting, but eventually the men, still all present, reached Elephant Island. The Antarctic isle was deserted though, and still many miles from any form of civilisation. Knowing that it would only be a matter of time before the men died of either starvation or hypothermia, Ernest Shackleton then made the bravest decision of his life.
He handpicked his five bravest men, and together they set sail on the lifeboat ‘James Caird’. In ice-cold weather, with waves peaking regularly at sixty feet, they sailed for seventeen days. After clocking up eight hundred miles, they eventually reached South Georgia Island. What made this journey even more remarkable was that they only had a sextant and chronometer to navigate with. Their journey wasn’t over though, as they were now faced with the sight of huge mountains. After crossing the mountains (they were the first to ever do so), Shackleton and his men discovered a whaling station, and from here they began to organise a rescue for the men still stranded on Elephant Island.
It took another three months for the men on that island to be rescued. The whole ordeal lasted just short of two years. Without Shackleton’s leadership qualities and bravery, the crew would surely have died. Remarkably though, not a single life was lost. Ernest Shackleton died of Angina in 1922, whilst working on South Georgia Island.
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