The strongest of the three lifeboats, the James Caird, was selected for the journey. It meant a 1,500km long boat journey through perilous seas. Knowing that the island was far from any shipping routes and was an inhospitable place, Shackleton decided their only hope was to reach the whaling stations of South Georgia. As the ice began to break up, the crew took the boats on a dangerous journey to Elephant Island, their new home. The crew had managed to salvage three lifeboats from the ship, which they named Stancomb Wills, Dudley Docker and James Caird, after the three major backers of the expedition. Shackleton’s crew set up camp on an ice floe while they made a plan for survival. After some eight months adrift in an ice-floe, Endurance was crushed by the pressure of the ice, finally sinking on 21 November 1915. However, en route it was beset in ice in the Weddell Sea. The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, led by Sir Ernest Shackleton, set sail for Antarctica in late 1914 in Shackleton’s ship Endurance. The James Caird leaves Elephant Island (Frank Hurley – public domain).
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