I have never experienced hot or cold suffering that reminded me in an even miniscule way of Shackleton’s Caird voyage.' 'How none of them went completely mad over that period of floating is just incredible. There were constant rebuffs and to be wet and cold is utterly debilitating,' Fiennes said. 'It was the most amazing suffering over a long period.

The audacious rescue mission later became known as the Caird voyage after their small lifeboat. Shackleton and his small crew sailed over 800 miles (1,300 km) across the Southern Ocean to a group of whaling stations in South Georgia. Related: When did Antarctica become a continent? He left the remainder of his men in the care of his second-in-command Frank Wild, who upturned the two remaining lifeboats to use as shelter. He selected five crew members to join him and set sail in the 22.5-foot-long (6.9-meter-long) lifeboat called the 'James Caird'. Ten days later, Shackleton set off to find help. On April 9 1916, the Endurance Expedition crew left the ice floe in the lifeboats, reaching the uninhabited and remote Elephant Island on April 14. Shackleton’s second-in-command Frank Wild inspects the crushed remains of ‘Endurance’ after the crew abandoned ship (Image credit: Getty / Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge) Shackleton's rescue mission Shackleton led his men through the shrinking ice pack for months while they tried to reach land. The ship sank shortly afterwards and the crew escaped with three lifeboats and limited supplies. Stuck fast in the ice, with the crew unable to break Endurance free, the ship drifted to within approximately 30 miles (48km) of Antarctica in January 1915, before drifting north.Įndurance was slowly crushed by the moving ice, until Shackleton ordered the crew to abandon ship on Oct. With a crew of 28 (including Shackleton), Endurance entered the Weddell Sea but became trapped in pack ice during Dec. On the other side of the continent, the second crew, called the Ross Sea Party, planned to drop off depot supplies from their ship Aurora. 'He hoped to cross Antarctica and make a famous name for himself over and above Scott.' 'His expedition would consist of two ships: one would drop supply depots for him and the other from the other side of the continent, which he would personally lead,' British explorer and Shackleton biographer Sir Ranulph Fiennes told All About History magazine. The crew sailed to the Weddell Sea via South Georgia. Formally known as the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, the Endurance Expedition to Antarctica began in August 1914.

Endurance lansing