South! The Story of Shackleton’s Last Expedition 1914-1917

Description

This book is the story of an extraordinary endeavor, of the first expedition to conquer the southernmost point on Earth, the Antarctica.

The preparations for the expedition were finalized just before Europe and half the world engaged into the First World War. In August 1914 Sir Ernest Shackleton boarded the ship Endurance in the company of his crew of 28 brave sailors and explorers – they left England, passed the coasts of South America and four months after they set sails they reached the final and most difficult part of their journey. They endured incredible hardships during the months that followed – first they hit and became trapped in a pack of ice that started crushing the ship slowly, forcing to crew to leave the ship and set up camp on the ice, then they continued their journey tied to a huge iceberg.

The expedition of the Endurance to the end of the world has been recounted multiple times by multiple authors, but none of them presents the journey in as many detail or as vividly as Shackleton’s own account. None of the accounts is as suggestive as this book when it tells about how the majority of the crew became stranded on a desolate place called Elephant Island and about how difficult it was to rescue them afterwards; none of them describes from the point of view of the insider the deprivation, the physical, emotional and mental problems the crew members suffered from during the expedition. The crew of the Endurance was made up of exceptional men – they never ceased to believe in their mission and they finally reached their goal and their destination.

South! was written and published almost a century ago, but the text does not seem to age – the travelogue is just as lively and captivating as it was when it was initially written down.
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