After reaching land and depositing a shore party, that boat (the Aurora) was torn from its moorings by the ice, and drifted for half a year before the ship broke free. This is the group known as the Ross Sea Party, who were tasked with setting up supply depots for the second half of Shackleton’s polar crossing. Meanwhile, on the other side of the continent, the other contingent of the expedition was encountering their own troubles. Yet this eventful tale is only half the story. Thus commenced months of Shackleton scrambling to find a suitable boat, heading south, and then being repelled by ice-until, finally, on his fourth attempt, Shackleton got through and rescued his crew, with no lives lost. The three sailors who had been left on the other side of South Georgia (too weak to make the hike) were picked up, and then Shackleton began organizing the far more difficult task of retrieving the 22 men stranded on Elephant Island. Once there, he was finally able to summon aid. Eventually they set out on the Endurance’s lifeboats and, after five awful days in horrible seas, the crew of 28 reached the isolated and desolate Elephant Island.ĭeciding that rescue was unlikely from such a remote place, Shackleton and five others took one of the lifeboats and, after two weeks, reached the scarcely more hospitable South Georgia, where he had to endure hurricane-force winds and climb an unforgiving landscape in order to arrive at the whaling station on the other side of the island. The crew then set up a camp on the ice flow, floating for several months more, hoping the winds and waves would push them toward land. They drifted helplessly for months, until the ice finally crushed and sank the ship. But his ship did not even reach the southern continent, instead getting trapped in floating ice during their approach.

In 1914, Ernest Shackleton set out on the Endurance on a mission to cross Antarctica via the pole. The bare facts of this story speak for themselves.

South! by Ernest Shackleton