On December 5, 1914, he left South Georgia for the South Pole. There were 27 crew members and 69 dogs on the plane. The leader of the expedition, Sir Ernest Shackleton, wanted to establish a base on the coast of the Weddell Sea and then go to the Ross Sea.
The ship encountered a barrier of sea ice in two days. The ship was stuck in the middle of a chocolate bar in mid-January after a gale pushed ice against one another.
The men could not do anything. The badly damaged ship was abandoned after nine months on the ice. They took food, bibles, books, clothing, tools, keepsakes, and three open lifeboats from the ship. Some dogs and a cat were shot.
The Endurance sank a few weeks after they had set out. Frank Worsley, the ship's captain and navigator, recorded its location using basic navigation tools. Without that information, it would not have been found.
The men formed a plan to cross the ice. They gave up after just seven and a half miles of travel in seven days.
When the ice broke up in April, the crew went to Elephant Island, a remote and uninhabited outcrop. The men were exhausted, some afflicted by sea sickness, others convulsed with dysentery.
They made it. They were on Elephant Island on April 15. It was the first time in almost 500 days that the men had stood on the ground.
After nine days of recovery, Shackleton, Worsley and four others took one of the boats another 8oo miles (1,300 km) across rough seas and in biting winds to South Georgia. Every surge of the sea was an enemy to be watched. It took 16 days to get there.
Their epic journey was not over despite their extraordinary feat of survival. The men crossed South Georgia's peaks and glaciers to reach a whaling station on the other side of the island. After several failed attempts, a rescue party set out for Elephant Island, where the remaining 22 crewmen were waiting.
In 1922, a new expedition was launched by Shackleton. He died of a heart attack while his ship was docked at South Georgia.
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