On December 5, 1914, the vessel Endurance, left South Georgia for Antarctica in the Imperial Trans-Atlantic Expedition to establish a base on the Weddel Sea coast. It was crewed by 27 men and captained by Ernest Shackleton.
Despite his years of experience, having failed twice before to reach the South pole, a fresh crew, and adequate supplies, this voyage was destined to end in tragedy.
Two days after leaving port they encountered the expected block of pack ice that surrounded the Antarctic, and that severely hampered their way forward, slowing them to a crawl. Gingerly, they maneuvered their way through the ice desert, hopeful that they would clear this mighty obstacle within a few weeks.
And so, they inched forward, solid ice grinding against the ship like nails against a chalkboard, but at least progress was being made even if it was at an agonizingly slow pace.
On January 18, just over 6 weeks since they had set sail, their luck ran out and, thanks to a fierce gale-force wind from the north, so did their way forward. So strong was the wind that they were pushed against the nearby land and blocked in by the following blocks of ice floes, trapped, no way to forge ahead, and no way to turn back.
HMS Endurance was stuck fast between a rock and a hard ice pack.
The frustrating part was that they were within one day of reaching their landing site but now, at the mercy of the ice, were slowly being pushed in the opposite direction, powerless to do anything about it.
All they could do was wait for the harsh winter to end, the ice to weaken so they could continue on their perilous journey. If only it had been that easy. Shackleton appeared optimistic in front of his crew, but in private he feared that there was worse to come.
The sheer force of the ice could be felt underfoot by the crew as the grip of the surrounding ice not only pushed them further away from their destination, but began to crush the groaning Endurance in its icy embrace. There was no way the ship could survive for long under this inexorable pressure.
It finally became too much for the immobilized vessel on October 27, 1915, the rudder ripped away by the sheer force of the ice, the keel breached, and freezing water rushing in. It was time for the crew to abandon ship.
Camp was set up with the intention, now that the ship was claimed by the sea, to march across land with the supplies that they had salvaged from the Endurance. An attempt to do just that failed miserably and they had no choice but to hunker down and wait out the months until conditions improved, if they could survive that long.
It took until April 7th for the weather become warm enough, but at last the ice floe they were marooned on floated closer to the Clarence and Elephant Islands, and then those ice floes themselves began to break up under the warmer weather and the rafts had to be quickly deployed to save the weary sailors.
It took six days of battling the rough sea conditions for the exhausted sailors to reach the uninhabited islands. Once there, it quickly dawned on them that rescuers were not going to find them in such an isolated location, and that they were going to have to save themselves.
A whaling station in South Georgia 80 miles away was their only hope and, allowing 9 days to recuperate as best they could, Shackleton, his second in command, Worsley, and four others set sail in one of the lifeboats, the freezing spray anything but a warm embrace.
Sixteen tortuous days it took to reach their goal and, on August 25, 1916, Shackleton returned to rescue his men who, after a two-year sojourn that had tested their mettle, were finally able to go home.
They had lost the Endurance to the ice, lost the race to the south pole, but not one life had been lost to the sea.