![]() ![]() Consequently, Shackleton sets off with five of his men in the lifeboat James Caird for South Georgia Island to bring relief. They are on land for the first time in 497 days but the isolated frozen crag offers no hope of passing ships or rescue. ![]() In the face of relentless hardship and weather, the team, still miraculously intact, reaches tiny Elephant Island in the sub-Antarctic Ocean. Months later as the ice breaks up, they take to three lifeboats which they'd mercifully salvaged from their ship before it sank. Denied of even reaching land, the Endurance crew quickly shift their sights to surviving atop drifting ice floes. The stranded party, we learn, is Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914–17 (better known as the Endurance Expedition) whose initial objective was to attempt the first land crossing of Antarctica. A brief synopsis, spoiler and all: Lansing's story opens with a ship's demise in the frozen Weddell Sea its crew of 28 evacuate onto the pack ice that is crushing their vessel. Still in print, it's perhaps the most popular book about Shackleton ever written. ![]() ![]() Most recently I read Alfred Lansing's Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage which became a bestseller on its publication in 1959. So I've been reading more about him (and by him) to gain insight into his legendary status in history. Ernest Shackleton is a central figure to my Long View Project which draws heavily on his Nimrod Expedition at Cape Royds. ![]()
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