""You seriously mean to tell me that the ship is doomed?" asked Frank Worsley, commander of HMS Endurance, stuck impassably in Antarctic ice packs. "What the ice gets," replied Sir Ernest Shackleton, the expedition's unflappable leader, "the ice keeps." Yet it did not get the ship's twenty-five crew members, all of whom survived a perilous voyage across sea, land, and ice to South Georgia, the nearest inhabited island." "First published in 1931, Endurance tells the full story of that doomed 1914-16 expedition and its incredible rescue. After the Endurance sank into Antarctica's Weddell Sea, its crew launched three life boats and fought off wind, cold, sleep deprivation, and lack of food to reach land. Threatened by fast-moving icebergs weighing as much as forty battleships and so thirsty they chewed on raw seal meat for the blood, the crew finally landed with relief on barren Elephant Island, but they were still far from civilization and Shackleton, Worsley, and four others were forced to sail eight hundred grueling miles in one cramped boat to seek help at the whaling stations in South Georgia. Even then, the whaling stations could be reached only by crossing the island on foot. It later took four attempts for Shackleton to rescue his men from Elephant Island." "Worsley compellingly recounts this legendary journey and his crucial role in it, then goes on to describe his adventures fighting U-boats in the Great War, sailing the equally treacherous waters of the Arctic, and making one final (and successful) assault on the South Pole with Shackleton."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved