

Together, text and image re-create the terrible beauty of Antarctica, the awful destruction of the ship, and the crew’s heroic daily struggle to stay alive, a miracle achieved largely through Shackleton’s inspiring leadership. And she presents the astonishing work of Frank Hurley, the Australian photographer whose visual record of the adventure has never before been published comprehensively. Their ordeal would last for twenty months, and they would make two near-fatal attempts to escape by open boat before their final rescue.ĭrawing upon previously unavailable sources, Caroline Alexander gives us an enthralling account of Endurance and Shackleton’s expedition-one of history’s greatest epics of survival.

Soon the ship was crushed like matchwood, leaving the crew stranded on the floes.

Weaving a treacherous path through the freezing Weddell Sea, they had come within eighty-five miles of their destination when Endurance, was trapped fast in the ice pack. In August 1914, days before the outbreak of the First World War, the renowned explorer Ernest Shackleton and a crew of twenty-seven set sail in their ship, Endurance, for the South Atlantic in pursuit of the last unclaimed prize in the history of exploration: the first crossing on foot of the Antarctic continent. Including never-before published photographs.
