Shackleton's Promise to Elephant Island

In August 1916, Ernest Shackleton stood at the bow of a Chilean tugboat, scanning the frozen shore of Elephant Island through binoculars. Four months earlier, he had left twenty-two men stranded on that desolate strip of rock and ice, promising he would return for them. No one expected him to keep that promise. To reach help, Shackleton had crossed eight hundred miles of the most violent ocean on earth in a twenty-two-foot lifeboat, then hiked over the unmapped mountains of South Georgia Island in a thirty-six-hour forced march.…