Special Interest > Documentary

Ernest Shackleton’s heroic expedition to the South Pole aboard The Endurance is captured here in all its graphic intensity by Australian cameraman Frank Hurley. After the conquest of the South Pole in 1911 by Roald Amundsen, there remained, in Shackleton's words, "one great main object of Antarctic journeyings - the crossing of the South Polar continent from sea to sea". However, weeks after the expedition reached the South Pole from England in 1914, The Endurance was locked in a hardening raft of ice. As Hurley recounted: “Like an imprisoned bird she [the Endurance] lies in the hands of her ruthless captor.” It would sink there eight months later. Meanwhile, Shackleton and his crew sailed off in tiny boats to find safety. Traversing glaciers, scaling cliffs and crossing treacherous seas in open boats, the men, though constantly threatened by cold and hunger, all miraculously survived. A story of remarkable heroism against impossible odds.