“But We Were Feeling Happy”

On May 15, 1916, the Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton and five of his men sailed up King Haakon Bay, on the western side of South Georgia Island in the Atlantic Ocean. All six were bruised and battered, with bursting frostbite blisters covering their faces, hands and legs. Over the preceding three weeks these men had sailed their tiny lifeboat, the James Caird, more than 1,300 kilometres across one of the most dangerous and unpredictable seas on earth, surviving raging thirst, extreme cold and near starvation. Left behind on a barren spit of Elephant Island were 22 others waiting for rescue; their ship, the Endurance, had sunk in the Weddell Sea seven months earlier. Ahead was a grim—probably impossible—trek over the towering, frozen, razor-sharp ridges of South Georgia to the whaling station on the eastern coast, the only hope of survival. No one had ever crossed the island on foot. Their gear for the trek would be a rope and a carpenter’s...