Trapped in Antarctic Ice: The Map of Shackleton's Impossible Escape

In 1915, Antarctic ice crushed Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance and left 28 men stranded on the Weddell Sea ice with no way to call for help. This animated map retraces what happened: the plan to cross Antarctica on foot, the ship frozen in the pack and carried north by the ice, the sinking, the camp on the drifting floe, the boats to Elephant Island, the open-boat voyage of the James Caird to South Georgia, the 36-hour crossing of the island's mountains, the rescue of the men left behind, and the discovery of the wreck, upright on the seabed 3,008 metres down, in 2022. All 28 men on the Endurance survived. Chapters: 0:00 The wreck · 0:33 The plan · 1:07 Trapped · 1:35 The sinking · 1:56 The ice camp · 2:23 The choice · 2:47 The boat · 3:07 The mountains · 3:30 The rescue · 4:02 Found · 4:35 The map Sources: Wikipedia, "Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition", "Endurance (1912 ship)" and "James Caird (boat)" PBS NOVA, Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure, expedition timeline: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/shackle... Royal Geographical Society and other expedition timelines (dates cross-checked; sources differ by a day on some dates and by 16-17 days on the James Caird voyage) Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust / Endurance22 announcement of the discovery (March 2022) and news coverage Ernest Shackleton, "South" (1919) for the expedition's own account Map credits: NASA GIBS Blue Marble (shaded relief and bathymetry); Natural Earth coastlines. Positions of the drift, boat and crossing routes are approximate. Photo credits: Frank Hurley photographs of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (public domain) via the State Library of New South Wales, State Library of Queensland, National Library of Australia, National Maritime Museum (no known restrictions) and Wikimedia Commons; winter flashlight scene (Underwood & Underwood, Library of Congress, public domain); launching of the James Caird (probably Frank Hurley, public domain); Grytviken whaling station, South Georgia, 1914 (public domain, Wikimedia Commons); "Landing on South Georgia", composite drawing and photograph from Shackleton's "South" (1919), probably by George Marston (public domain, Wikimedia Commons). Wreck of the Endurance, 2022: Endurance22 / Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust and National Geographic, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons. Narration: synthetic voice. More strange places and true stories: Map of Oddities. #Shackleton #Endurance #Antarctica