Ernest Shackleton Survives Endurance Expedition
Sailing from South Georgia Island for Antarctica on December 5th, 1914, 27 men set out for the South Pole, hoping to establish a base on Antarctica’s Weddell Sea Coast.
Two days later, the HMS Endurance entered the pack ice standing guard around the Antarctic continent, poking and prodding its way through leads in the ice until a January 18th northerly gale trapped the ship for the next 10 months to come.
In the words of crewman Thomas Orde-Lees, the Endurance became “frozen like an almond in the middle of a chocolate bar.” Finally, on October 27, 1915, a new wave of pressure rippled across the ice, lifting the ship’s stern and tearing off its rudder and its keel, effectively crushing the ship’s hull.
Ernest Shackleton Sets Sights on Survival
Led by famed Antarctic explorer, Ernest Shackleton, after salvaging what they could from the doomed ship, the crew’s initial plan was to march across the ice toward land, but that was abandoned after the men managed just seven and a half miles in seven days.
Camping on the ice until conditions improved, slowly and steadily their ice flow drifted farther to the north, until on April 7th, 1916, the snow-capped peaks of Clarence and Elephant Islands came into view. Two days later their ice raft broke apart, forcing the men to row in frigid conditions, until they clambered ashore on Elephant Island. It would be the first time the men stood on dry land since leaving South Georgia 497 days earlier.
After nine days of rest and recuperation, Shackleton and five others set out in one the Endurance’s salvaged lifeboats, the James Caird, facing off with a 16-day voyage through monstrous swells and angry winds, bailing water and beating ice off the sails as they ventured 800 miles back to South Georgia Island.
Blown off course by fiercesome winds, Shackleton and two others set off on foot, climbing over mountains and sliding down glacier fields for 30 hours until they could reach help at the whaling station where they first departed.
Meanwhile, the remaining crew hunkered down on Elephant Island, employing additional salvaged lifeboats to create what they called the “Snuggery,” surviving the bitter cold with ever-diminishing hopes of being rescued.
Endurance Crew Rescued By Shackleton
After two failed attempts to navigate through the flows of pack ice, Shackleton procured a third ship, the Yelcho, and on August 30, 1916, the saga of the Endurance and her crew came to an end.
The men on the island were settling down to a lunch of boiled seal’s backbone when they spied the Yelcho just off the coast. It had been 128 days since the James Caird had departed for help, ending twenty months of gutsy survival since the misadventure of the Endurance first began.