Shackleton's Boat Journey - Softcover

Frank Worsley

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1848890427 ISBN 13: 9781848890428

Publisher: The Collins Press, 2010

Synopsis

We were twenty-eight men facing winter on a bleak barren beach of Elephant Island ... there was a possibility of a fatal shortage of food ... there was no hope of rescue ... Plainly the thing to do was to take a boat to the nearest inhabited point. Ernest Shackleton Ernest Shackleton from Kildare, the expedition leader, Frank Worsley, captain of the wrecked Endurance, second officer Tom Crean from Kerry, seaman Tim McCarthy from Cork, and two other crewmen sailed 800 miles in the James Caird, a 20-foot open boat, to bring help from the whaling station at Grytviken in South Georgia. They survived the horrendous boat journey and organised the rescue not a life was lost. All of them were heroes.

About this title

Review:

On 1 August 1914, on the eve of World War I, Sir Ernest Shackleton and his hand-picked crew embarked in HMS Endurance from London's West India Dock, for an expedition to the Antarctic. It was to turn into one of the most breathtaking survival stories of all time. Even as they coasted down the channel, Shackleton wired back to London to offer his ship to the war effort. The reply came from the First Lord of the Admiralty, one Winston Churchill: "Proceed". And proceed they did. When the Endurance was trapped and finally crushed to splinters by pack ice in late 1915, they drifted on an ice floe for five months, before getting to open sea and launching three tiny boats as far as the inhospitable, storm-lashed Elephant Island. They drank seal oil and ate baby albatross (delicious, apparently.) From there Shackelton himself and seven others- -the author among them--went on, in a 22-foot open boat, for an unbelievable 800 miles, through the Antarctic seas in winter, to South Georgia and rescue. It is an extraordinary story of courage and even good-humour among men who must have felt certain, secretly, that they were going to die. Worsley's account, first published in 1940, captures that bulldog spirit exactly: uncomplaining, tough, competent, modest and deeply loyal. It's gripping, and strangely moving. --Christopher Hart

Review:

Simply gripping --Irish Mountain Log

A stirring account of a fascinating adventure --Sunday Tribune

A breathtaking story of courage, skill and determination under the most appalling conditions --Sir Edmund Hillary

About this edition

• Publisher: The Collins Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1848890427
• ISBN 13: 9781848890428
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160