Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition

During the hours it took to abandon the ship, he remained more or less apart as the equipment, dogs, and men were gotten off.

His name was Sir Ernest Shackleton, and the 27 men he had watched so ingloriously leaving their stricken ship were the members of his Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition.

The date was October 27, 1915.

The name of the ship was Endurance.

To understand how they got here and why one man thought this was worth doing at all, we need to go back and meet Ernest Shackleton.

The expedition they were on was one of the most ambitious of all Antarctic expeditions.

The goal of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, as the name implies, was to cross the Antarctic continent over land from west to east.

Evidence of the massive scope of such an undertaking is the fact that after Shackleton's failure, the crossing of the continent remained untried for fully 43 years until 1957 to 1958.

Shackleton was an Anglo-Irish explorer, a veteran of earlier Antarctic expeditions, including Scott's first expedition and his own later attempt that had come closer to the South Pole than any one before turning back, a decision to retreat rather than risk his men's lives that already revealed something essential about his character.

And by 1914, the South Pole had been reached by Amundsen and then by the doomed Scott and Shackleton, hungry for a great Antarctic prize that remained unclaimed, conceived an enormously ambitious objective, to cross the entire Antarctic continent on foot from one coast to the other, passing through the South Pole, a traverse of some 3,000 kilometers across the most hostile terrain on Earth.

He named the venture the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, assembled a crew and a ship, and set sail, even as the world descended into the First World War for the far south.

The ship was called the Endurance, named for the Shackleton family motto, that by endurance we conquer, and the name would prove grimly and then gloriously appropriate.

The plan was for the Endurance to carry the crew into the Weddell Sea, on the Atlantic side of Antarctica, and to land them on the coast, from which the crossing party would begin its traverse of the continent, but the expedition's troubles began before it ever reached land, and as the Endurance pushed south into the Weddell Sea in early 1915.

And finally, with a ship borrowed from the Chilean government, a small steamer called the Yoko, Shackleton made his fourth attempt, and this time the ice relented enough to let him through.

On the 30th of August, 1916, more than four months after Shackleton had left them, the men on Elephant Island, settling down to a meager meal, looked out and saw a ship approaching, and they knew that the boss had come at last.

and shackleton anxiously counting the small figures on the beach as the yelko drew near saw that they were all there every one of the twenty-two all alive within an hour the men were aboard and elephant island and the long ordeal was left behind Every single member of the Endurance Expedition survived.

Their records noted, quote, It was reckoned that nine good penguins could boil down to a gallon of oil, best done when they first came ashore to breed and were fat and oily, end quote.

When the men of the ill-fated Endurance Expedition led by Ernest Shackleton were stranded in Antarctica, they survived by eating penguins.

In the course of my travels, I've had the pleasure of seeing most penguin species firsthand in the wild.

I've seen them in Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, the Falkland Islands, the Galapagos, South Georgia Island, and Antarctica.

Stroyer left in 1905 when the company moved to Paines Lane and changed its name to Coventry Simplex.

Simplex engines quickly gained recognition, powering early vehicles like the first Aston Martin and supporting expeditions such as Ernest Shackleton's Transantarctic Expedition in 1914.

During the First World War, Simplex motors were in high demand, particularly for use in searchlights.

Production ramped up, supporting the war effort and expanding the company's technical expertise.

trouble.

Lots of similarities, as you'd expect, with the Shackleton Expedition, which is about to depart and run into its own trouble.

Very similar troubles down in the Antarctic.

Is the world clamoring for news from this expedition? Are people following it closely?

It was eventually brought back to North America, had babies.

And there are, to this day, there are descendants of this cat that had survived this extraordinary expedition.

A lot luckier than Mrs. Chippy on the Shackleton expedition, who I'm afraid did not make it.

So we have, thank goodness, those people are back safe and sound.

What? Is that an authorised decoration you're wearing or some foreign thing?

That is the Polar medal, sir, for the Shackleton Expedition.

It's

a wild and lonely place, you understand.