The Ship Was Crushed—But Every Man Survived | The Endurance Expedition

[00:00:00]In 1914, explorer Ernest Shackleton set out to accomplish something no one had ever done before, cross the entire Antarctic continent on foot.

[00:00:08]His ship, the Endurance, [music] carried 28 men into the Weddell Sea, where they planned to land on the Antarctic coast [music] and begin the journey.

[00:00:17]But on January 18th, 1915, the ship became trapped in dense [music] pack ice.

[00:00:23]The men tried cutting and breaking a path around the vessel, but it was useless.

[00:00:28]The Endurance could no longer move under her own power.

[00:00:32]She was now drifting [music] wherever the ice carried her.

[00:00:35]For months, the crew lived aboard the frozen [music] ship while the Antarctic winter closed around them.

[00:00:40]As the ice shifted, enormous flows [music] pressed against the wooden hull.

[00:00:45]The ship groaned, buckled, and began taking [music] on water.

[00:00:50]On October 27th, Shackleton finally gave the order to abandon [music] her.

[00:00:55]The crew unloaded food, tents, three lifeboats, and whatever equipment they could carry.

[00:01:00]Then they established [music] a camp on the moving ice and watched as the Endurance was slowly torn apart.

[00:01:06]On November [music] 21st, 1915, the ship slipped beneath the Weddell Sea.

[00:01:12]Now 28 [music] men were stranded on drifting sea ice, hundreds of miles from help.

[00:01:17]They remained on the ice for nearly five more months, hoping the currents would carry them toward open water.

[00:01:23]When their flow finally began breaking apart in April 1916, [music] the men crowded into the three small lifeboats.

[00:01:30]After a brutal voyage through freezing seas, [music] they reached Elephant Island, the first solid ground they had touched in nearly 500 days.

[00:01:38]But the island was uninhabited and far outside normal shipping [music] routes.

[00:01:43]No one knew they were there.

[00:01:44]Shackleton realized that waiting for rescue could mean death.

[00:01:48]He selected [music] five men and launched their most seaworthy lifeboat, the James Caird, toward South Georgia, approximately 800 miles away [music] across some of the most dangerous ocean on Earth.

[00:02:00]17 days later, against nearly impossible odds, they reached South Georgia, but they had landed on the wrong side of the island.

[00:02:08]Shackleton, Worsley, and Tom Crean then crossed mountains and glaciers that had never been mapped, walking for 36 hours without sleep until they reached a whaling [music] station.

[00:02:18]But Shackleton had no intention of resting.

[00:02:22]Three days after [music] reaching the whaling station, he was already making his first of four attempts at sailing back [music] toward Elephant Island.

[00:02:29]When he finally made it through the ice, all 22 men were still waiting there, >> [music] >> sheltering beneath overturned lifeboats, and trusting that he would return.

[00:02:38]The planned crossing of Antarctica had failed. [music] The Endurance had been crushed and lost beneath the ice.

[00:02:44]But after more than a year stranded in one of the most hostile places on Earth, all 28 men who [music] had sailed aboard the aptly named Endurance survived.