Shackleton’s Boat Journey
by Frank Arthur Worsley
£9.99
- Paperback
- E-Book
551 in stock
Reviews
A breath-taking story of courage under the most appalling conditions'
Sir Edmund Hillary
About the Book
On August 1, 1914, on the eve of World War I, Sir Ernest Shackleton and his hand-picked crew embarked in HMS Endurance from London's West India Dock, for an expedition to the Antarctic. It was to turn into one of the most breathtaking survival stories of all time. Even as they coasted down the channel, Shackleton wired back to London to offer his ship to the war effort. The reply came from the First Lord of the Admiralty, one Winston Churchill: "Proceed." And proceed they did. When the Endurance was trapped and finally crushed to splinters by pack ice in late 1915, they drifted on an ice floe for five months, before getting to open sea and launching three tiny boats as far as the inhospitable, storm-lashed Elephant Island. They drank seal oil and ate baby albatross (delicious, apparently). From there Shackelton himself and seven others - the author among them - went on, in a 22-foot open boat, for an unbelievable 800 miles, through the Antarctic seas in winter, to South Georgia and rescue. It is an extraordinary story of courage and even good-humour among men who must have felt certain, secretly, that they were going to die.
Worsley's account, first published in 1940, captures that bulldog spirit exactly: uncomplaining, tough, competent, modest and deeply loyal. It's gripping, and strangely moving.
The Author
Frank Arthur Worsley
Frank A. Worsley, a native New Zealander, served as a reserve officer in the Royal Navy before becoming captain of the Endurance. His navigation skills were crucial to the eventua survival of the crew. He died in 1943. He commanded two ships in World War I, for which he was decorated, sailed with Shackleton again in 1921, and in 1925 was the joint leader of the British Arctic Exploration. Worsley died in 1943.Related
-
Paperback | Pub: 06 Jun 2016£8.99‘Sixty Degrees North is a story that we tell, both to ourselves and to others. It is a story about where – and perhaps also who – we are.’The sixtieth parallel marks a kind of borderland. It wraps itself around the lower...
-
Paperback | Pub: 10 Oct 2012£5.99For almost a thousand years, Scotland and England have been neighbour nations. For more than half that time, they were foreign countries, often at war. Four hundred years ago, they began to share a monarchy; three hundred years ago, they joined in a...
-
Paperback | Pub: 08 Aug 2019£14.99
The initial chapters are an odyssey through the early town, from the Green to the Gallowgate, charting the disappearance of the irreplaceable medieval townscape. Moving on to more modern times she traces the evolution and gradual erosion of the...
-
Paperback | Pub: 23 May 2019£12.99The small island archipelago of St Kilda, which rises majestically from the stormy waters of the North Atlantic, has a magic and allure which is both enduring and inexplicable. For centuries, St Kilda’s remoteness (it lies sixty miles west of the...
