

The goal of his expedition was to cross the Antarctic overland, but more than a year later, and still half a continent away from the intended base, the Endurance was trapped in ice and eventually was crushed. In the summer of 1914, Sir Ernest Shackleton set off aboard the Endurance bound for the South Atlantic.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title. This astonishing tale of survival by Shackleton and all twenty-seven of his men for over a year on the ice-bound Antarctic seas, as Time magazine put it, defined heroism.” Alfred Lansing's brilliantly narrated book has long been acknowledged as the definitive account of the Endurance's fateful trip. It would end only after a near-miraculous journey by Shackleton and a skeleton crew through over 850 miles of the South Atlantic's heaviest seas to the closest outpost of civilization. But for Shackleton and his crew of twenty-seven men the ordeal had barely begun. In January 1915, after battling its way for six weeks through a thousand miles of pack ice and now only a day's sail short of its destination, the Endurance became locked in an island of ice.įor ten months the ice-moored Endurance drifted northwest before it was finally crushed. Bound for Antarctica, where polar explorer Ernest Shackleton planned to cross on foot the last uncharted continent, the Endurance set sail from England in August 1914.
