What do you think of this fact?
The plan was huge: Ernest Shackleton and his crew wanted to be the first to cross Antarctica on foot. That never happened. Instead, they ended up in a story people still tell today, because it ends so improbably well.
Stuck in the Weddell Sea
In January 1915, Endurance got locked in the pack ice of the Weddell Sea. For months the ship drifted with the ice while the pressure of the floes slowly crushed its hull. In late October 1915 the men had to abandon ship, and in November Endurance sank.
Now 28 men were standing on the ice, with tents, supplies and three lifeboats. They lived on drifting floes for months. When the ice finally broke up, they rowed off and reached Elephant Island in April 1916, a barren island where nobody was going to stumble across them.
800 miles in a lifeboat
Shackleton decided to go for help. On April 24, 1916, he set out with 5 men in the James Caird, a lifeboat just 22.5 feet long. The goal: South Georgia, about 800 miles away. After a little over 2 weeks on the Southern Ocean, they made it.
On the wrong side of the island, though. So Shackleton, Tom Crean and Frank Worsley crossed its uncharted mountains and glaciers. They kept going for 36 hours straight until they reached the Stromness whaling station on May 20, 1916.
The rescue
The 22 men on Elephant Island still had months to wait. After several attempts, Shackleton finally picked them up on August 30, 1916, aboard the Chilean tug Yelcho. All 28 men of the Weddell Sea party had survived.
The expedition also had a second group on the other side of the continent, the Ross Sea party. Its story played out separately and is a different one.
The wreck of Endurance was rediscovered in the Weddell Sea on March 5, 2022, more than 100 years after it sank.
Goal missed, ship lost, but the whole crew brought home. Sometimes that’s the bigger achievement.