During his legendary 1914 expedition to Antarctica, Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance became trapped in ice "like an almond in a piece of chocolate." When the ship was crushed nine months later, Shackleton and his men crowded into three lifeboats and made their way to an inhospitable spit of land called Elephant Island (the first land they had touched in 497 days). Shackleton then chose five other men to cross 800 miles of ferocious seas in a single lifeboat to search for help.
Seventeen days later (in what surely ranks among the greatest feats in the history of navigation) the team reached South Georgia Island. Then, with two-inch brass screws protruding from the soles of their boots, Shackleton and two others set out at 2 a.m. on May 19, 1916, crossed 26 miles of unexplored mountains and glaciers (in just 36 hours), and staggered into a Norwegian whaling station.
Shackleton, dressed in rags and thoroughly exhausted, remained a proper Englishman. His first words? "I'm afraid we smell."
Sources
Biography, April 2002, p. 83
