On This Day in History: August 31

Shackleton's Voyage

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While men were dying on the Somme during World War I, explorer Ernest Shackleton and his team were undergoing their own ordeal at the frozen ass end of the world.

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: August 30, 1916--

There is something badass about traveling to Antarctica. Norwegian Roald Amundsen first reached the South Pole in 1911. Did you know it’s 9,000 feet above sea level? So not just a long-ass trip from the coast, but uphill the whole fucking way. Speaking of badass, in 2017 16-year-old Jade Hameister skied from the Ross Ice Shelf to the South Pole, becoming the youngest person to do so. The previous year she’d done a TED Talk about her journeys, and trolls commented “make me a sandwich.” So, she did, and left it for them at her destination, saying, “Now ski 37 days and 600km to the South Pole and you can eat it.” So badass.

In 1914 Sir Ernest Shackleton planned to be the first to do a land crossing of the entire Antarctic continent via the pole. It did not go as planned.

Shackleton was already an accomplished Antarctic explorer. In January 1915 his ship, the aptly named Endurance,became trapped in the sea ice. Eventually the ship was crushed by the ice and sunk, trapping 28 men, 69 dogs, and one cat on the ice. I’ll rip off that Band-Aid now. None of the dogs or the cat, named Mrs. Chippy, survived.

As the ice began to break up, the men were forced into their three lifeboats. It was a perilous and frozen six-day journey to the uninhabited Elephant Island. Knowing no one would find them there, they adapted one of the boats for a long sea voyage. Nine days after landing on Elephant Island, Shackleton and five of his crew departed on an 800-mile open-boat journey to South Georgia Island. I should mention that this was now 15 months since Endurance became trapped, and near the start of winter in the southern hemisphere.

So, yeah. That trip sucked.

Sixteen days in the boat to South Georgia Island. Then a rest, followed by two days’ journey across the mountains to Stromness Whaling station, which had been Endurance’s last port of call. Because Elephant Island had become encased in ice, three attempts at reaching those left behind failed. Shackleton finally begged the Chilean government to lend him a steam tug named Yelcho, and on August 30, 1916, the remainder of the crew of Shackleton’s voyage were rescued with no loss of (human) life.

The time from Endurance becoming trapped until the final rescue was over 19 months. With the war still raging, about which the explorers knew nothing, their return to civilization received little attention.

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