 |
Endurance trapped in the ice |
Today, we had a lecture of Shakleton's journey into the Antarctic, considered to be the epitome of a survival story. There goal was to cross the entire Antarctic continent, but their ship, the Endurance, got stuck in the ice during the winter of 1915. It approached within a mile of where they were to set out on their trek across the Antarctic, but then the ice started shifting father and farther into the sea. Eventually the ship was crushed and sunk, stranding its 28-man complement on the ice. After months spent in makeshift camps as the ice continued its northwards drift, their ice float almost melting to nothing, the party took to the lifeboats to reach the inhospitable, uninhabited Elephant Island.
 |
Elephant Island to South Georgia Island whaling station |
Shackleton and five others then made an 800-mile (1,300 km) open-boat journey in the James Caird to reach South Georgia. A storm almost had them miss the lone island, they almost wrecked trying to find a place to land the boat, and then they had to climb the mountains of the island to reach the whaling camp on the other side (and feat which had never been done before.) From there, Shackleton was eventually able to mount a rescue of the men waiting on Elephant Island and bring them home without loss of life.
 |
James Caird Launch |
No comments:
Post a Comment