Description:
The Endurance was supposed to carry Ernest Shackleton and his men toward one of the last great prizes of exploration. Instead, the ship became imprisoned in Antarctic pack ice, drifted helplessly for months, and was finally crushed by the frozen sea. Captain Frank Arthur Worsley witnessed the disaster from the deck of the Endurance and then shared every stage of the crew's astonishing fight for survival. The men lived on drifting ice, launched their small boats into some of the most dangerous waters on Earth, and eventually reached the bleak refuge of Elephant Island. Their only hope lay in an almost unimaginable voyage across the Southern Ocean in the twenty-two-foot James Caird.
Worsley's navigation during that journey became legendary. With storms obscuring the sky and only fleeting opportunities to take observations, he guided Shackleton and their companions across hundreds of miles of open ocean to South Georgia. Endurance is his firsthand account of disaster, leadership, courage, seamanship, and one of the most extraordinary rescues in the history of exploration.
Brief description: Frank Arthur Worsley was a New Zealand-born sailor, explorer, and naval officer whose extraordinary skill as a navigator helped save the men of Sir Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Born in 1872, Worsley went to sea as a teenager and spent decades developing the seamanship and navigational expertise that would later prove essential in Antarctica.Worsley served as captain of the Endurance when the ship became trapped in pack ice and was eventually crushed. After months spent drifting with the ice, he joined Shackleton and four other men aboard the tiny James Caird for the desperate open-boat voyage from Elephant Island to South Georgia. Using a sextant under almost impossible conditions, Worsley navigated the boat across roughly 800 miles of the Southern Ocean and brought the party within reach of rescue.He later served during the First World War and continued sailing, exploring, and writing about his experiences. Worsley died in 1943 and remains one of the great navigators of the heroic age of Antarctic exploration.