The Most Astonishing Rescue Journey in History You Never Heard of!
Shackleton’s spirit of the epic journey has never been touched by anyone.
His Men survived by seal meat, penguins and their dogs.
How many of us know about the British polar explorer Ernest Shackleton? Obviously, only a few amongst us could have heard of his epic journey and none has been managed to recreate Shackleton’s entire voyage it seems. The team of Shackleton used the equipment and available clothes back in the twentieth century. However, Tim Jarvis, an Australian explorer, and his team envisioned a voyage to replicate Shackleton’s historical survival journey by using the same equipment and rations. Back in 1916, under the title “Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition” Shackleton ventured to cross the Antarctic and reach the South Pole with a team of 27 men on his ship named Endurance. A month later, the temperature just dropped that turned the ship to freeze completely in the ice and it sunk at last. And from then, the mission just took a point of surviving and thus came to ahead of one of the most astounding rescue journeys in the historical pages of the world.
When Shackleton set forth his most challenging expedition back in 1916 by crossing Antarctica from the base on the Weddell Sea to McMurdo Sound via the South Pole, the expedition ship Endurance was trapped unexpectedly trapped in ice off the Caird coast. The ship had been meandering for almost 10 months before crashing down by the pack ice. And now, with the great will, the crew drifted on the sheet of floating ice for another five months. Finally, they escaped in boats to Elephant Island, where they survived by seal meat, penguins and their dogs.
Shackleton and his five men had a tough row to hoe of 1300km to South Georgia in a whaleboat which was a 16-day journey. It was a ferociously dangerous journey of the ocean but he took the journey to land on the southern side of South Georgia. Then, Shackleton and his small team made the first crossing of the island to seek backing. It was only after 4 months, Shackleton succeeded in rescuing his from Elephant Island by meeting four separate relief expeditions. To our surprise, none of Shackleton’s crew of this challenging expedition died. And that was how the legend made his historical journey to be untouched by none.
In 2013, Tim Jarvis, an Australian explorer just made a similar voyage to re-enact the legend’s journey. To honor the great explorer, Jarvis and his took the same attempt of crossing the Antarctic to the South Pole. But here, it was not the case of Shackleton’s team, but this crew had not spent over 500 days deserted in the Antarctic.
How amazing Shackleton’s journey would be! If only we had gone through this voyage, we could have felt how tremendous and spell-binding the saga would be. Shackleton had contributed an enormous part in history and that’s how he turned out to be the legend. Meanwhile, Jarvis stated that “One of his key messages was the importance of teamwork” and also added that, “We need to all act together in this world today, overcome our problem” in an interview. This is true because the spirit of Shackleton and the will to survive was found strongly and also amidst his crew and thus they survived at the island for nearly 500 days.
