Friday, May 10, 2013

Shackleton and the crew stranded

1916 – Ernest Shackleton and five companions completed one of history's greatest small-boat journeys when they arrived at South Georgia after an 800-nautical-mile journey in a lifeboat.

The History has come to consider the James Caird's voyage as one of the greatest small-boat journeys ever accomplished.
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voyage of the James Caird was a small-boat journey from Elephant Island in the South Shetland Islands to South Georgia in the southern Atlantic Ocean, a distance of 800 nautical miles (1,500 km; 920 mi). Undertaken by Sir Ernest Shackleton and five companions, its objective was to obtain rescue for the main body of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914–17, trapped on Elephant Island after the loss of its ship Endurance.
In October 1915 the expedition's ship, the Endurance, had been crushed and sunk by pack ice in the Weddell Sea, leaving Shackleton and the crew stranded on an unreliable ice surface thousands of miles from safety. During the following months the party drifted northward until April 1916, when the floe on which they were camped broke up. They then made their way in the ship's lifeboats to the remote and inaccessible Elephant Island, where Shackleton quickly decided that the most effective means of obtaining relief for his beleaguered party would be to sail one of the lifeboats to South Georgia.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia