Special Interest - Sir Ernest Shackleton

My first experience with Sir Earnest Shackleton, came with the reading of the book The Endurance - Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition by Caroline Alexander.

A short extract of the book

In August 1914, days before the outbreak of the First World War, the renowned explorer Ernest Shackleton and a crew of twenty-seven set sail for the South Atlantic in pursuit of the last unclaimed prize in the the history of exploration: the first crossing on foot of the Antarctic continent. Weaving a treacherous path through the freezing Weddell Sea, they had come within eighty-five miles of their destination when their ship, Endurance, was trapped fast in the the ice pack. Soon the ship was crushed like matchwood, leaving the crew stranded on the floew. Their ordeal would last for twenty months, and they would make two near-fatal attempts to escape by open boat before their final rescue.

Drawing upon previously unavailable sources, Caroline Alexander gives us a riveting account of Shackleton's expedition - on of history's greatest epics of survival. And she presents the astonishing work of Frank Hurley, the Australian photographer whose visual record of the adventure has never before been published comprehensively. Together, text and image re-create the terrible beauty of Antarctica, the awful destruction of the ship, a miracle achieved largely through Shackleton's inspiring leadership.
The survival of Hurley's remarkable images is scarcely less miraculous: The original glass plate negatives, from which most of the book's illustrations are superbly reproduced, were stored in hermetically sealed cannisters that survived months on the ice floes, a week in an open boat on the polar seas, and more months buried in the snows of a rocky outcrop called Elephant Island. Finally Hurley was forced to abondon his professional equipment; he captured some of the most unforgettable images of the struggle with a pocket camera and three roles of Kodak film.

Published in conjunction with the Americian Museum of Natural History's landmark exhibition on Shackleton's journey, The Endurance thrilling recounts one of the last great adventures in the Heroic Age of exporation - perhaps the greatest of them all.

The Shackleton Expedition

On December 5, 1914, Sir Ernest Shackleton, embarked in the 300-ton wooden barkentine Endurance, departed Grytviken whaling station on South Georgia Island on a mission to cross the Antarctic continent on foot. On January 18, 1915, just 100 miles from their intended harbor and starting point for the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, Endurance became locked in pack ice and drifted northward for 10 months. The ship was crushed by the ice, and the crew abandoned ship on October 27, 1915. Endurance sank on November 21, leaving the expedition stranded on drifting ice. They were finally forced into small boats on April 9, 1916 and seven days later landed on Elephant Island.

On April 24, 1916, Shackleton and five others departed in the small boat James Caird on a seemingly impossible mission to sail to South Georgia and then arrange a rescue of the 22 men marooned on Elephant Island. After an incredibly arduous 16-day battle with high winds and heavy seas, they landed on the south shore of South Georgia. Shackleton, Frank Worsley and Tom Crean, after a super-human 36-hour trek across uncharted and previously uncrossed mountains and ice fields, stumbled into Stromness on the north side of the island. After three unsuccessful attempts, a fourth rescue effort retrieved all 22 men from Elephant Island on August 30, 1916. Not a man was lost.

Frank Hurley - Photogapher

What Shackleton did was amazing, what Frank Hurley the Australian Photography did was just as amazing to document this most extrodinary experience. A picture tells a thousand words, and some of the images here will no doubt inspire you to know more about the experiences of Sir Ernest Shackleton and this twenty seven crew on The Endurance.

Photographer Frank Hurley (1885-1962) first made his name on Douglas Mawson's Australasian Antarctic expedition in 1911-13. His stills and documentary film Home of the Blizzard (1913) secured his position as Shackleton's photographer.

After Shackleton, Hurley became an Official war photographer and cameraman, and in peacetime established himself as Australia's best known photographer. He also made such documentary films as The Ross-Smith Flight (1920), Pearls and Savages (1921), and the drama film of life on Papua, The Jungle Woman (1926).

He returned to the Antarctic as a filmmaker with Mawson in 1929-31, and made many further documentary and fiction films in the 1930s. In the Second World War he served as an Official photographer once more, before returning chiefly to still photography and a number of popular books documenting the Australia of which he was so proud.

The National Library of Australia contains a extensive collection of photos, including a large number online here (Best tip for finding photos is to do an Advanced Search for 'Hurley' and 'Shackleton'). Also Look at his web site at http://www.frankhurley.com