'Fortitudine Vincimus': An Extraordinary Story of Antarctic Survival

‘Men wanted for hazardous journey:
Small wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness,
Constant danger, safe return doubtful.
Honour and recognition in event of success.’

- Hiring advertisement of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914-1917)

​At a talk in Hong Kong, I came across the surviving images of Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914-1917). When the crew of HMS Endurance had to abandon ship, each men were allowed to take only two pounds of personal belongings. Any extra weight, the leader of the expedition Ernest Shackleton reckoned, would only diminish their chances of survival. The rest of more than four hundred photo plates were deliberately destroyed by Shackleton to prevent anyone from being tempted to take them along. They were about to embark on an impossible march to safety.

Alexandra Shackleton, the granddaughter of the great explorer Ernest Shackleton at the RGS Lecture in Hong Kong.

Images from the Imperial Trans-Antartic Expedition (1914-1917) on display at a lecture by the RGS of Hong Kong.

This expedition was to be the last of its kind in the ‘Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration’ - a time before machines would start to play an important role in expeditions. With the HMS Endurance stuck and later altogether crushed by pack ice, Shackleton had no doubt his expedition was going to fail. Yet just as the ship's name suggest - 'Fortitudine Vincimus' (Latin meaning 'By Endurance We Conquer', taken from Shackleton's own family motto) - Shackleton would pluck triumph from this disaster and turn it into one of the most extraordinary story of determination and survival.

Photo taken after the crew had to abandon ship in a hurry. The HMS Endurance is being crushed by pack ice in the background with half broken masts.

Despite popular belief that polar expeditions were always stories of extreme heroism, ill-fated expeditions were in fact not always so glorious. In an attempt to discover the Arctic passage to China, two of the most technologically advanced British ships at the time, HMS Erebus and HMS Horror, were similarly stuck in pack ice in northern Canada in the 1840s. Recent evidence revealed that the crew had resorted to cannibalism in their final hours before they were all vanquished by the Arctic. When the Endurance sank, Shackleton must have known very well the odds he was against. Apart from being the survivor of a number of failed expeditions which had almost cost his life, it was only barely a year before his former co-explorer, Captain Scott, had perished in the race to the South Pole.

The three explorers of the 1900s Discovery Expedition (from left to right): Ernest Shackleton, Captain Robert Falcon Scott and Edward Wilson. Shackleton is the sole survivor of Antarctic explorations - the rest both died in the Terra Nova Expedition in 1912.

Against impossible odds, Shackleton decided that he would take a small crew and sail for rescue. They were to reinforce a tiny 22 feet (6.7m) x 6 feet (1.8m) lifeboat and sail it from Elephant Island to South Georgia - a dangerous 800 miles (1,300 km) journey on some of the roughest seas on earth. To navigate to South Georgia was like 'looking for a needle in a haystack': they were only able to take four readings with a sextant in the entire journey, and they had to be done with two men bracing the navigator Frank Worseley against huge waves as he took the measurements.

The Endurance crew waving good bye to the small team heading to South Georgia.

Navigator of the small lifeboat Frank Worsley.

On top of that, there was also no margin for error: a single degree error in the reading would have meant 60 miles of latitude difference - and they only had a leeway of about ten miles. Ultimately, much of the readings were taken and adjusted according to what the navigator Frank Worsely called 'merry guesswork'. But after 17 days they had made it to South Georgia. To this day it is still remembered as one of the greatest small boat journeys ever completed. They had just performed their very first miracle.

But they would need another miracle. Due to a storm, the crew were forced to land on the opposite side of the island. To get help they must cross the entire uncharted island interior - full of treacherous crevasses and glaciers (and today still popular with Himalayas climbers) - in order to get to the whaling station on the other side. Sill numb from frostbites they quickly got themselves ready. The small team reinforced their boots with boat nails at the bottom, and took with them an old rope and a carpenter's adze. As hypothermia was a constant threat, there would be no time to rest. It was only in one instance that Shackleton had allowed them to nap and told them it had been half an hour. It was in fact barely five minutes.

Frank Worsley and Lionel Greenstreet looking across South Georgia. Below is the HMS Endurance at the whaling station of Stromness.

It would be another 36 hours before they marched into the whaling station at Stromness. After some knocking, the station manager finally opened his door. He asked the three filthy and emaciated men 'Who the hell are you?' Shackleton gave an equally short answer, 'My name is Shackleton.' Shocked by the forgotten crew of the HMS Endurance who had now come back from the dead, the manager reportedly broke down and cried. The same night Shackleton looked out at a blizzard that had arrived. It would have had certainly killed them otherwise. Three days later, Shackleton had already begun his long and relentless rescue mission for the rest of his men.

The Endurance crew trapped on Elephant Island.

After a series of failures and four months past, Shackleton saw his men on Elephant Island with his binoculars. He counted them one by one and exclaimed 'they are all there, they are all safe!' By then the rest of the crew which had been stuck on ice for more than a year and a half had been forced to dug up previously discarded putrid meat to sustain themselves.

The moment Shackleton's rescue team arrived onto Elephant Island.

The crew didn't exactly return to a hero's welcome when they arrived back in Britain. It was 1916, and they were almost seen as cowards who had avoided two years of the Great War. Most enlisted immediately upon their return - and perhaps in the most tragic irony - some also died shortly after.

But the Endurance's legacy lives on, and Shackleton is still remembered as one of the greatest leaders in the history of polar exploration. In the words of the Antarctic explorer Sir Raymond Priestly (1886-1974), 'for scientific discovery give me Scott; for speed and efficiency of travel give me Amundsen; but when disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton.'

Statue of Shackleton outside the headquarters of the Royal Geographical Society in London.