The Endurance:
Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition
By Caroline Alexander
Alfred A. Knopf, $29.95
ISBN 0375404031

Buy or borrow this book! Support your local independent bookseller Find it in a WorldCat library Compare prices at major online bookstores

Stumbling across the gravel beach of South Georgia Island toward mid-afternoon of May 20, 1916, Sir Ernest Shackleton and two companions knocked on the door of Thoralf Sorlle, station foreman of the Stromness Whaling Company. Sorlle, not recognizing the ragged men, asked if he could be of service. When the saddest looking of the threadbare trio stretched upright and said, "I am Shackleton," Sorlle turned his face away and wept.

Caroline Alexander is the curator of an upcoming exhibition on Shackleton's famous journey sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History. Gleaning new information from previously unavailable sources, and including 150 photographs from the official expedition photographer, Frank Hurley, the author chronicles the expedition from embarkation at Plymouth to the crew's rescue from Elephant Island on August 30, 1916.

Shackleton and his crew on the Endurance set sail from South Georgia in November 1914, bound for landfall at Vahsel Bay, Antarctica. There, a select party was to trek overland across the continent. But the Endurance became trapped in pack ice short of the coast, forcing the crew to spend the winter aboard. When the ship succumbed to the monumental pressure of the kinetic ice, the crew bivouacked on the floating ice for months, awaiting the eventual thaw.

Their original supplies mostly spent, the crew survived on seal meat, penguins, blubber, a doughy delight called "bannock," and pemmican. The men eventually escaped the diminishing ice pack in the ship's three life boats, reaching Elephant Island for their first contact with solid earth in 497 days.

Shackleton and a hand-picked crew of five immediately embarked in the largest of the life boats and crossed the South Atlantic to return to South Georgia, where he secured a ship and returned to rescue his shipmates.

Alexander's story of their 21-month ordeal in unbelievably harsh conditions is fast-paced and journalistic in tone. Her retelling of this chronicle includes more complete biographies of the crew than previous accounts, and their diaries add rich detail to the narrative. The bounty of stark, surrealistic images of the polar world harvested during the long ordeal by Frank Hurley also brings the drama to life. The author's vivid prose combines with these photographs to offer a book deserving of attention.

C.D. Sinclair is a writer in Wichita Falls, Texas.