Frank A. Worsley was the captain of the H.M.S. Endurance, the ship used by the legendary explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton in his 1914-16 expedition to the Antarctic. On its way to the Antarctic continent the Endurance became trapped and then crushed by ice, and the ship’s party of twenty-eight drifted on an ice floe for five months. Finally reaching an uninhabited island, Shackleton, Worsley, and four others sailed eight hundred miles in a small boat to the island of South Georgia, an astounding feat of navigation and courage. All hands survived this ill-fated expedition; as Worsley writes, By self-sacrifice and throwing his own life into the balance, [Shackleton] saved every one of his men … although at times it had looked unlikely that one could be saved.
This remarkable book … shows [Shackleton] both luckless and lucky, and supremely cool and courageous throughout. Worsley writes without heroics … but makes us feel to the marrow the conditions that the party endured before all hands were rescued. -The New Yorker
Worsley’s account of that journey is a breath-taking story of courage, skill and determination under the most appalling conditions. -Sir Edmund Hillary