Hello, friends! On 4th November 1914, the British ship Endurance, crossed stormy seas, and was moving towards the world’s most dangerous and mysterious continent, Antarctica.
A crew of 28 people was aboard this ship. The command was led by an explorer, Sir Ernest Shackleton.
He desired to achieve that which no one else had ever before. To walk across the continent of Antarctica.
You heard it right, friends. In a time with no smartphone, no GPS, no modern technology, in the temperatures as brutal as -50°C on this icy continent, in the midst of snowstorms, from one edge to the another, he wanted to cross this continent on foot. He planned to reach the coast of Antarctica on this ship through the Weddell Sea. Look at the map. Their plan was to land here exactly and start trekking to the South Pole, crossing which, he would then walk across to the Ross Sea. In total, this trek spanned 2,900 km.
If everything went according to the plan, it would’ve taken about 120 days to finish. But how badly did this plan fail, and the struggles they endured, neither they nor you can imagine it, friends.
On 5th November 1914, Endurance reached a whaling station on the South Georgia Island.
This was the last human settlement on their way. If you look at the map, this group of islands is present near the tip of South America. Just south of them is the protruding part of Antarctica.
This is called the Antarctica Peninsula. Beside it is the Weddell Sea. A sea that is surrounded by Antarctica on three sides.
Because of this, the ice cannot flow out easily. And there is a dense permanent layer of ice.
The weather was bad that day. So were the conditions in the Weddell Sea. People told Shackleton to delay this mission.