Shackleton's Boat Journey

Frank A. Worsley was the captain of the H.M.S. Endurance, the ship used by the legendary explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton in his 1914-16 expedition to the Antarctic. On its way to the Antarctic continent the Endurance became trapped and then crushed by ice, and the ship's party of twenty-eight drifted on an ice floe for five months. Finally reaching an uninhabited island, Shackleton, Worsley, and four others sailed eight hundred miles in a small boat to the island of South Georgia, an astounding feat of navigation and courage. All hands survived this ill-fated expedition; as Worsley writes, "By self-sacrifice and throwing his own life into the balance, [Shackleton] saved every one of his men ...although at times it had looked unlikely that one could be saved." "This remarkable book ...shows [Shackleton] both luckless and lucky, and supremely cool and courageous throughout. Worsley writes without heroics ...but makes us feel to the marrow the conditions that the party endured before all hands were rescued."-The New Yorker "Worsley's account of that journey is a breath-taking story of courage, skill and determination under the most appalling conditions."-Sir Edmund Hillary