It was March 1914 when the H.M.S. Endurance pulled out of port heading South for the antarctic.

The 25 man crew (and one stow away), lead by Sir Ernest Shackleton were headed for Antarctica. The goal was to land on one side of Antarctica and send a 6 man dog sled team 3,000 kilometers across the continent to be the first to make a cross continental journey. As they journeyed South they joked with the young stowaway that if anything should happen he would be eaten first since there were no edible plants in Antarctica and only penguins, seals & walrus's during the summer.

As the ship was unloading the supplies winter suddenly hit and the ice pack closed in trapping the ship for winter. At first they lived on the ship which was made out of incredibly thick iron wood, but as winter progressed the ice moved in and threatened to crushed the ship. Their only way home. The crew finally moved about 1 mile away from the stricken boat. They lived in 3 overturned life boats they had sledged from the ship. After about a month the ship, their way home, was crushed and sank on Nov. 21, 1915. Eventually this camp became too dangerous because of ice and they moved to a large ice flow they named "Patience Camp." The sun had set for the six month Antarctic night. Shackleton's logs record days of howling blizzards with temperatures from -40C. to -60C.

After six months of living in overturned life boats the sun rose and the ice started to break up so they dragged their boats the miles necessary to get to the open water and set sail in the three boats (the biggest was only seven meter) for Elephant Island which is an uninhabited little speck of rock on the north end of the Antarctica Peninsula.

On April 1916 (13 months after the expedition began) they landed on Elephant Island. Soon after Shackleton and 5 others rowed out to sea in the largest boat , the "James Caird", to South Georgia island across 1,300 kilometers of the worst stretch of sea in the world in an seven meter open boat. This was the Cape Horn, which is much respected for it's violence. After braving hurricane force winds and mountainous waves they landed exhausted on S. Georgia after 15 days.

Due to prevailing winds they landed on the back side of S. Georgia away from the whaling camp they needed to reach. The seas would not allow them to sail around the island so they had to climb over the glacier covered mountain range in the middle of the island without climbing gear. The sharp volcanic range (2,200 meter peaks) was so sharp that once they crested the range they could sit with one leg on either side of the mountain and watch the approaching storm that would surely kill them. In an act of desperation they formed a human toboggan and slid down the far side glacier into the dark not knowing what was in front of them. They arrived in the whaling camp in one piece without the benefit of clothing where the bottom of their human toboggan had been.

One hundred twenty eight days later the rescue boat from S. Georgia arrived at Elephant Island and rescued the survivors that had been left there.

During the whole ordeal not a single human life was lost, not even the stow-away.