As you read, think about...
What was Shackleton's original mission and why did it change?

On August 8, 1914, the Endurance, a three-masted wooden ship, set sail from England for Antarctica. It would never return. Over the next two years, the ship's commander, Ernest Henry Shackleton, and his crew lived one of the great adventure tales of the twentieth century.

Ernest Shackleton Courtesy of NOAA Corps Collection

Shackleton was born in Ireland in 1874. Raised in England, he went to sea for the first time at the age of 16 and enjoyed a successful career as an officer in the British merchant fleet. But his real love was for the Antarctic.

Antarctica was the last continent to be discovered, although its existence had long been suspected by geographers. It was first sighted by a Russian naval crew in 1820. Would-be explorers of the newly discovered continent had to be prepared to face extraordinary challenges. Almost entirely covered by an icecap, the Antarctic continent is home to 90 percent of the world's ice and snow, and winter temperatures have been recorded there more than 100 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit). In the seas surrounding the continent, winds can reach 200 miles per hour, and waves 100 feet high can crash down on the deck of those brave or foolish enough to enter its waters. In addition, the continent is surrounded for much of the year by a frozen sea that extends as much as 1,000 miles from the mainland. As a result, only the shoreline of Antarctica, and not all of that, had been explored and mapped in the nineteenth century; Antarctica's interior remained unknown territory, one of the last great question marks on the maps of the earth.

The inland exploration of the continent began in earnest in the early twentieth century, with a "race" developing among explorers from various European countries to be the first to reach the South Pole, the southernmost point on the globe. (Antarctic exploration time-line) Shackleton made his first trip to Antarctica in 1901, as a junior officer on an expedition commanded by British explorer Robert F. Scott. Returning in 1907 on a new expedition, this time as commander, Shackleton came within 100 miles of reaching the South Pole before being turned back by terrible storms. But it was a Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen, who finally reached the South Pole in 1911.

The race to the South Pole had been won, but other challenges remained. Shackleton decided to attempt the first crossing of the Antarctic continent, an 1,800-mile journey across frozen plains and mountains. He began raising money and recruiting a crew of seamen and explorers, and by the summer of 1914 he was ready to proceed.

Original Plan

As you read, think about...
What were the Antarctic conditions into which The Endurance sailed?

Image from CIA World Factbook 2000

Shackleton's plan was to sail the Endurance west across the Atlantic to South America, and then south into the Weddell Sea, the great gulf that cuts into the side of West Antarctica. When they reached the coast, Shackleton and six companions would disembark and set off by dogsled across the continent. After further exploring the coastline along the Weddell Sea, the Endurance would return to England. Meanwhile, a sister ship, the Aurora, would take up position on the far side of Antarctica, on the shore of the Ross Sea, to meet Shackleton at the end of his journey.

The Endurance had been specially built to meet the challenges of sailing in the most dangerous waters on earth. The ship was 144 feet long and 25 feet wide, and the heavy oak and fir timbers of her hull were designed to stand up to the constant grinding pressure of the ice the ship would encounter in the polar seas. Her crew of 28 included, in addition to the usual complement of officers and seamen, a meteorologist, a geologist, a physicist, and a photographer. The Endurance carried three lifeboats and below her decks stored food sufficient to feed her crew for up to two years.

Setting sail on August 8, 1914, Shackleton's expedition reached Argentina in early October, where they took on board 69 dogs intended to pull the sleds across Antarctica. They sailed south from Argentina on October 26. Their last contact with civilization came in early November, when they put in briefly at South Georgia Island, a barren, mountainous speck of land off the southernmost tip of South America. The island was home to a group of hardy Norwegian whalers and to factories where whale blubber was melted down into fat. The South Georgian whalers warned Shackleton that spring was late coming to the Antarctic that year, and that the polar ice was not melting at nearly the usual rate. Shackleton needed to reach the shoreline of the continent within the next two months if he had any hope of carrying out his expedition's goals. But having already traveled so far, Shackleton felt there could be no turning back at this point.

The Endurance left South Georgia on December 5. For the next seven weeks, the ship gingerly picked its way southward past the thousands of mountainous icebergs and wide, flat ice floes that littered its path through the Weddell Sea. Shackleton had hoped to make landfall by the end of December, but when New Year's day came the Endurance was still hundreds of miles from Antarctica. Worse, the sea began to disappear as the ship picked and pushed its way through increasingly narrow open channels in the surrounding pack ice.

Getting Stuck

As you read, think about...
Why was it dangerous for The Endurance to be surrounded by pack ice?
What were the conditions the men lived under during the Antarctic winter?

On January 19, 1915, with the Endurance 12,000 miles from London and fewer than 100 miles from the coast of Antarctica, pack ice closed in all around, locking the ship into position, in the words of one crew member, "like an almond in the middle of a chocolate bar." The stakes for the expedition had changed dramatically—from making a path-breaking journey across a continent to surviving the coming winter frozen tight in one of earth's least hospitable places. Not only was it cold, it was dark. So far south were they that by early May the sun never rose above the horizon; only a few minutes of twilight around noon broke the blackness of the polar night.

The men passed the long, dark hours performing the chores necessary for survival: keeping the Endurance ship-shape in anticipation of the time when the ice would melt again and free them to proceed; melting ice for drinking water; and hunting seals and penguins to feed themselves and the expedition's dogs. They entertained themselves as well as they could by reading, playing cards, listening to music on the ship's hand-cranked phonograph and, when weather permitted, staging dog-sled races.

Although the Endurance's journey seemed to have come to a standstill, the ship was actually moving steadily as the pack ice was shoved away from Antarctica by winds and ocean currents. Over the next nine months, the Endurance would be carried a thousand miles north and west, without ever breaking free of its icy imprisonment. The currents and blizzard winds had another effect, too, breaking up the smooth, icy surface of the Weddell Sea into a jumble of broken, jutting slabs and blocks of ice, which by mid-July 1915 had begun to press inward against the ship's hull. As the men lay in their bunks at night they were kept awake by the sounds the ship's timbers creaking and groaning as ice ground against the hull. Tensions rose aboard ship from the crew's long confinement, as did fears that the Endurance would not survive the relentless attack of the elements.

By October, the Antarctic winter was finally coming to an end; with temperatures rising, the ice that imprisoned the Endurance was melting. But the welcome return of warmer days brought the ship neither freedom nor safety. On October 18, the pressure of the icy build-up along its sides shoved the Endurance upwards onto the surface of the ice pack, where it rolled onto its side, turning everything and everyone within topsy-turvy. Then, unexpectedly, water opened up beneath the ship, and it again floated upright and free in a narrow channel. Shackleton and his crew dared again to dream of escaping with their ship from their frozen prison—but only briefly. Once again the ice moved back in on all sides. On October 24, 1915, under immense pressure, the sides of the ship began to cave in. "It was a sickening sensation," Shackleton would later write in his diary, "to feel the decks breaking up under one's feet, the great beams bending and then snapping with a noise like heavy gunfire." Realizing his ship was doomed, Shackleton ordered lifeboats and provisions moved off the Endurance onto the surrounding ice. Three days later, on the 281st day of the ship's imprisonment, Shackleton gave orders for the ship to be abandoned. Three and a half weeks later, while the crew watched with horror, the crushed hulk of the ship slipped beneath the ice and sank to the bottom of the sea.

Floating Along

The Endurance was gone. The only shelter its crew had now were flimsy canvas tents pitched on the unstable ice. It would require "endurance" of another kind to save Shackleton and his men from an icy or watery death—the will to survive when all odds were against them. On December 23, they set off on a desperate trek, dragging the lifeboats and their dwindling supply of provisions northwestward across the frozen wastes. Progress was agonizingly slow, little over two miles a day. By Shackleton's estimate, they were about 200 miles from the nearest dry land, but no one could guess how far they were from the open sea that would allow them to launch their boats. Five days of dragging the boats left the men exhausted and dispirited. Shackleton gave orders for them to make camp; all they could do was wait and see if the continued northward drift of the pack ice would open up a channel for their escape. With the exception of a Christmas feast of canned anchovies and canned beans, their diet came to consist almost entirely of seal and penguin meat, and the occasional biscuit. Still, on December 31, Shackleton wrote optimistically in his diary: "The last day of the old year: May the new one bring us good fortune, a safe deliverance from this anxious time, and all good things to those we love so far away."

By early March, the men could feel the ocean swelling under the pack ice. By late March, the pack ice had broken and they were adrift in the sea on a large ice floe. As the time came close when they would have to trust their luck in the open sea, Shackleton sadly gave the order to kill off the remaining sled dogs, since there was no room for them in the lifeboats (with limited food supplies, the men could not afford to waste any source of fresh meat, so after killing the dogs, they ate them.) Finally, on April 9, 1916, their ice floe reduced to a mere 50 yards across, Shackleton gave the order to launch the lifeboats.

Elephant Island

As you read, think about...
How were the men rescued from Elephant Island?
How long did the men of The Endurance spend in Antarctica?

They set sail for Elephant Island, an uninhabited speck of land 20 miles long, 13 miles wide, and close to 100 miles away. There were only seven hours of daylight out of every 24, and Shackleton feared that his little armada would lose sight of each other in the darkness. If they missed the landfall on Elephant Island, another would not come their way for 600 miles. Heavy seas, snow, and rain drenched the men to the skin, and strong currents pulled them in the wrong direction. Seasickness, sleeplessness, frostbite, and thirst tormented them (with no ice to melt, they no longer had any source of fresh water). Still they grimly rowed on, knowing they had no other choice. Finally, on April 15, 1916, the lifeboats reached Elephant Island, and for the first time in over a year and a half, the men of the Endurance stood upon solid ground.

Elephant Island 01.62 Courtesy of NOAA Corps Collection

Their troubles were not yet over. No rescue party would ever come looking for them, and no passing ship would ever stumble across them in such a remote location. And so, on April 24, Shackleton and five of his crew set off in a 22-foot lifeboat for the whaling station at South Georgia Island, 800 miles to the northeast. Dodging icebergs, swamped by giant waves, battered by hurricane-force winds, they fought their way through the seas for two weeks. On May 10, after a heroic voyage, they made it to South Georgia Island, but they landed on the southwest side of the island, which was the uninhabited side of the island. The whaling station was on the northeast side of South Georgia, 29 miles away across mountains and glaciers that had never been explored. Once again, sheer endurance would have to see them through.

Two of Shackleton's men were too weakened to go any farther. Leaving them in the care of a third man, Shackleton and the two others set out on the last stage of their incredible journey in the early morning hours of May 18. All day they climbed up to the peak of the 4,500-foot mountain in the center of the island, and all night they stumbled down its east side toward the whaling station. At last, on the afternoon of May 19, 1915, they staggered into the settlement, looking more like ragged scarecrows than living men. The first two people they came across, young boys, took one look at them and ran away. But soon they found aid. That night, bathed and fed, they slept in real beds and knew that they were safe. Though it took several months to launch a rescue operation, on August 30, 1916, Shackleton was back at Elephant Island, where he rescued the remaining 22 men of the crew of the Endurance. Shackleton's expedition failed to cross Antarctica—and it would be another four decades before anyone else succeeded in doing so. But the men of the Endurance lived up to their ship's name, in their indomitable will to survive and return home from the ends of the earth.

Copyright (c) 2001 by Study of Place, TERC (Cambridge, MA)
Ice photographs courtesy of Antarctic Cooperative Research Centre and Australian Antarctic Division