The Men Who Watched for Shackleton

In April 1916, Ernest Shackleton left twenty-two men stranded on Elephant Island, a barren spit of rock off the Antarctic coast. He promised he would return with a rescue ship. Then he disappeared into eight hundred miles of the most violent ocean on earth in a twenty-two-foot lifeboat.

The men had no radio. No way to know if Shackleton was alive or dead at the bottom of the Southern Ocean. Weeks passed. The Antarctic winter closed in. Temperatures plunged. Their shelter was two overturned boats propped on rocks, and their food was seal meat and penguin.

Frank Wild, the man Shackleton left in charge, did something remarkable. Every single morning, he rolled up his sleeping bag and announced, "Get your things ready, boys. The boss may come today." He said it when blizzards howled. He said it when men were sick with frostbite and dysentery. He said it on days when rescue seemed impossible. For four and a half months, Wild kept those men alive by keeping them ready.

On August 30, a ship appeared through the fog. Shackleton had come back, just as he promised.