Background
On 5 December 1914, Shackleton's expedition ship Endurance left South Georgia for the Weddell Sea, on the first stage of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Its destination was Vahsel Bay, the southernmost explored point of the Weddell Sea at 77° 49' S, where a shore party was to land and prepare for a transcontinental crossing. Before it could reach this spot the ship was trapped in pack ice, and by 14 February 1915 was firmly beset, despite prolonged efforts to free her. During the following eight months she drifted northward until, on 27 October, she was crushed by the pack's pressure, finally sinking on 21 November. As his 27-man crew set up camp on the slowly-moving ice, Shackleton's focus shifted to how best to save his party.
Shackleton's initial plan was a march across the pack ice to the nearest land, where the party would try to reach a point that ships were known to visit. This idea was thwarted by the nature of the ice's surface, later described by Shackleton as "soft, much broken up, open leads intersecting the floes at all angles", which made travel almost impossible. After struggling to make headway over several days, the march was abandoned; the party established "Patience Camp" on a flat ice floe, and waited as the drift carried them further north, towards open water. They had with them three lifeboats, which Shackleton had named after the principal backers of the expedition: Stancomb Wills, Dudley Docker and James Caird. The party marked time for more than three months until, on 8 April 1916, they finally took to the boats as the ice started to break up. Over a perilous period of seven days they sailed and rowed through stormy seas and dangerous loose ice, to reach the temporary haven of Elephant Island on 15 April.
Read more about this topic: Voyage Of The James Caird
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