[rlmorel]

A real feat was the Shackleton Expedition, after their ship was crushed, spent six months on steadily disintegrating ice floes, eating seals and penguins, until they had to climb into their boats and sail three days through open ocean to land on a small island. Realizing they would not survive there, they set up one of their boats and made an extraordinary 720 nautical mile voyage over open ocean only a month or so after the official end of the antarctic winter with only three chances at taking a celestial fix from a heaving small boat, and hit Georgia Island square on.

Impossible, but they did it.

I saw the actual boat they did it in at an exhibit at the Peabody-Essex Museum...just cannot believe it. That was a small boat.

Then they had to travel overland to the other side of the island, and traveled 32 miles over rugged, crevassed glacier with a carpenter’s adze, wool clothes, 50 feet of rope and wood screws put through the soles of their shoes.

An utterly remarkable endeavor.

[KamperKen]

"An utterly remarkable endeavor"

That still understates what is the greatest story of survival I've ever read. I've read both Alfred Lansing's "Endurance" and Shackleton's "South" and the story is touched upon in other books on polar exploration.

As I commented in another discussion thread, if Shackleton had taken dogs instead of ponies on the Nimrod expedition he would have been the first to make it to the south pole in 1908 or 1909.

I envy that you got to see the James Caird.