Eight Hundred Miles for Twenty-Two Men

In April 1916, Ernest Shackleton stood on the frozen shore of Elephant Island and faced an impossible choice. Twenty-two of his men were stranded on that desolate rock after their ship Endurance had been crushed by Antarctic ice. They had shelter, barely. They had food, barely. But rescue would never come to them — someone had to go find it.

Shackleton chose to leave the twenty-two behind and sail eight hundred miles across the most treacherous ocean on earth in a twenty-two-foot lifeboat called the James Caird. For seventeen days, he and five companions endured hurricane-force winds, towering waves, and frostbite to reach South Georgia Island. Then he crossed unmapped mountains on foot to reach a whaling station.

His first words to the station manager were not about his own survival. They were about his men. "Tell me, when can we go back for them?"

Three times ice turned his rescue ships back. Three times Shackleton tried again. On August 30, 1916 — four months after he had left — his ship finally broke through. Every single man was alive.