shackleton's journey map

Shackleton began planning his next journey to Antarctica almost as soon as he returned from the Nimrod expedition of 1907-1909. He had only missed the pole by 100 miles and with Roald Amundsen having already 'conquered' the South Pole, Shackleton felt a burning desire for another equally ambitious feat.

This map shows the proposed route of Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. It would cross the Antarctic continent from west to east, beginning on the coast of the Weddell Sea and finishing on the coast of the Ross Sea.

The challenges

Shackleton and his men would have to cover 1,500 miles while carrying food for only 100 days which meant having to maintain an ambitious pace of 15 miles a day. No other British explorer had come close to achieving this in the Antarctic.

To add to the challenge, they had no idea where the Weddell Sea was or where the coastal fringe was for that matter. They also were unwaware that the first half of the route, from the Weddell Sea side, would take place over territory that was completely unknown beyond the fringe of the coastline. Any number of obstacles and physical barriers such as mountains or huge crevasses could be in their path.

The plan and the men

Shackleton's plan was for six men and 70 dogs to land at Vahsel Bay in the Weddell Sea and begin the trek across the Pole to the other side of the continent.

At the same time, a second, six-man party landed at McMurdo Sound in the Ross Sea would lay a series of supply depots for the transcontinental party.

To ensure this plan worked, Shackleton would need two ships, the Endurance and the Aurora. Over five thousand men (and remarkable for the time, three women) volunteered for the expedition. Twenty-seven of the 56 men were selected for Shackleton's own 'Endurance' party while the other 28 were assigned to the 'Aurora'.

By the summer of 1914 the expedition was ready to get under way and the 'Endurance' sailed from London's East India Dock on 1 August. That very day Germany declared war on France and so the start of the expedition coincided with the outbreak First World War.

This unlucky coincidence made Shackleton unsure of whether to go ahead with the expedition or not. After consulting with his men, he sent a telegram to the Admiralty (the authority responsible for the command of the Royal Navy in Great Britain under whose permission the expedition sailed) offering the services of the 'Endurance' and her crew to the war effort. In response, he received a single word 'Proceed'. The First Lord, Winston Churcill, later provided a longer explanation saying he thought it would be best if the expedition went ahead.

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Endurance Expedition: Shackleton's Antarctic survival story

The Endurance Expedition was a failed mission to cross the Antarctic on foot, leaving 28 explorers stranded.

Endurance Expedition

Shackleton's rescue mission, fate of the second crew, shackleton's earlier expeditions, additional reading, bibliography.

The Endurance Expedition was a British mission to cross the Antarctic on foot in 1914-17. Launched in August 1914, the expedition became one of the most famous survival stories of all time after the expedition's ship, Endurance, became stranded and then sank during the voyage to the Antarctic. 

The Endurance's crew became stranded on the remote Elephant Island and were only rescued over four months later, in August 1916, after expedition leader Sir Ernest Shackleton (1874-1922) left to seek help. The miraculous survival of the Endurance expedition crew earned Shackleton worldwide fame though his goal to cross the Antarctic on foot was never achieved. 

The location of the sunken ship Endurance was lost for 107 years until being rediscovered on March 5, 2022. 

Formally known as the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, the Endurance Expedition to Antarctica began in August 1914. The crew sailed to the Weddell Sea via South Georgia. "His expedition would consist of two ships: one would drop supply depots for him and the other from the other side of the continent, which he would personally lead," British explorer and Shackleton biographer Sir Ranulph Fiennes told All About History magazine. "He hoped to cross Antarctica and make a famous name for himself over and above Scott." On the other side of the continent, the second crew, called the Ross Sea Party, planned to drop off depot supplies from their ship Aurora. With a crew of 28 (including Shackleton), Endurance entered the Weddell Sea but became trapped in pack ice during Dec. 1914. Stuck fast in the ice, with the crew unable to break Endurance free, the ship drifted to within approximately 30 miles (48km) of Antarctica in January 1915, before drifting north. 

Endurance was slowly crushed by the moving ice, until Shackleton ordered the crew to abandon ship on Oct. 27, 1915. The ship sank shortly afterwards and the crew escaped with three lifeboats and limited supplies. Shackleton led his men through the shrinking ice pack for months while they tried to reach land. 

On April 9 1916, the Endurance Expedition crew left the ice floe in the lifeboats, reaching the uninhabited and remote Elephant Island on April 14. Ten days later, Shackleton set off to find help. He selected five crew members to join him and set sail in the 22.5-foot-long (6.9-meter-long) lifeboat called the "James Caird". He left the remainder of his men in the care of his second-in-command Frank Wild, who upturned the two remaining lifeboats to use as shelter. 

Related: When did Antarctica become a continent?

Shackleton and his small crew sailed over 800 miles (1,300 km) across the Southern Ocean to a group of whaling stations in South Georgia. The audacious rescue mission later became known as the Caird voyage after their small lifeboat. "It was the most amazing suffering over a long period. There were constant rebuffs and to be wet and cold is utterly debilitating," Fiennes said. "How none of them went completely mad over that period of floating is just incredible. I have never experienced hot or cold suffering that reminded me in an even miniscule way of Shackleton’s Caird voyage."

Shackleton and his men endured heavy seas, Force-9 winds and ice build-ups on the hull that threatened to capsize their vessel. Shackleton later recounted that the waves reached heights of over 100 feet (30 meters) and moved at speeds of 50 mph (80kmph). On May 5, 1916, the boat was even struck by a tidal wave that Shackleton initially mistook for the sky. He later wrote: "I have never seen a wave so gigantic."

The James Caird somehow survived the voyage, which Fiennes credits to Shackleton’s leadership. "They had already experienced Endurance sinking and lived on ice floes for months before trying to work out the safest way out. Whatever way Shackleton chose, death was the likely outcome but he kept cheerful."

After 17 days at sea, the James Caird landed on the southern coast of South Georgia — the opposite side of the island from their destination. After recovering from the voyage, Shackleton and two of his crew trekked for 36 hours across the island, reaching Stromness station on May 20. Shackleton next arranged a rescue ship to collect the remaining 22 crew stranded on Elephant Island.

After several aborted rescue attempts, Shackleton was lent a tugboat called Yelcho by the Chilean government and he finally reached Elephant Island on August 30, 1916. A smoke signal was sent from the shore while Shackleton approached the beach in a small boat. Figures emerged from the capsized lifeboats and when he was within earshot Shackleton called out: "Are you alright?"

“All well!” Came the reply. All the men on the island had survived. "It is an absolutely incredible survival story,” Fiennes said.

The story of the Endurance's crew is a supreme example of survival against the odds. However, the neglected Ross Sea Party became stranded off Antarctica until January 1917. "Shackleton was criminally negligent in his planning for the other side," Fiennes said. "Three of the party (including the commander Aeneas Mackintosh) died and of course there was no way of knowing that the Endurance had sunk. The three men died horribly for nothing. They had actually managed to drop most of the food off, even though their ship with most of their kit had been caught in the ice and taken away before they had unloaded properly. It was a disaster.”

Because the story of Endurance has become so famous, the sufferings of the Ross Sea Party and the fact that Shackleton achieved none of his actual objectives during 1914-17 have almost been forgotten.

It wasn’t until Sir Vivian Fuchs’s Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1955-58 that the first overland crossing of Antarctica was completed. Fuchs achieved this by using tracked snow vehicles and it wasn’t until Fiennes’ own mission, named the Unsupported Antarctic Continent Expedition (1992-93) that a crossing of Antarctica by foot was successful.

In 1901 Shackleton served as Third Officer under the command of Captain Robert Falcon Scott on the British National Antarctic Expedition, named after the expedition's ship 'Discovery'. The expedition  was a milestone in British polar exploration, and the group conducted extensive scientific and geographical research into what was then a largely unexplored continent. 

The Discovery Expedition also included an early attempt to reach the South Pole. Shackleton accompanied Scott and Dr Edward Wilson on this journey and they reached a ‘Farthest South’ record of 420 miles from the Pole on Dec. 30 1902. 

During the attempt to reach the South Pole, Shackleton suffered from ill health, though this did not stop him continuing with the journey. “Shackleton did show an incredible willpower and it had to be greater than anybody else because of his illnesses," said Fiennes. "He had a weak heart and knew it so he wouldn’t allow anyone to test it. He also had lung problems, which were exacerbated by altitude… On all of his expeditions most people would have withdrawn with that state of health.”

In 1907, Shackleton returned to the Antarctic but this time he was in command of what was known as the ‘Nimrod’ Expedition. Along with fellow explorers Jameson Adams, Eric Marshall and Frank Wild he achieved the record for reaching the furthest south, in his attempts to once again reach the South Pole. "Shackleton got much further south by finding an inlet at Mount Hope to get to the Beardmore Glacier," Fiennes said. "He then got to within 97 miles of the South Pole, which was amazing. This was a world record and I would call it a success on the way to the ultimate success. It wasn’t a failure but Shackleton realised that his critics would deem him a failure because he hadn’t quite reached the Pole."

As well as reaching the farthest south, a separate group from the expedition reached the estimated location of the South Magnetic Pole. The expedition also achieved the first ascent of Antarctica’s second-highest volcano, Mount Erebus, and Shackleton was knighted by Queen Victoria upon his return.

Historian Dan Snow spoke to Ranulph Fiennes about his research into Shackleton's expedition and his own Antarctic exploring. The Royal Geographical Society has a wealth of fantastic home-schooling, classroom or personal study resources on Shackleton's Antarctic expeditions.  

• " Shackleton: A Biography " Ranulph Fiennes (Michael Joseph, Penguin Random House, 2021)
• Alfred Lansing, Endurance. The true story of Shackleton’s incredible voyage to the Antarctic (Phoenix, 2003)
• Shackleton Endurance Expedition - Timeline, Royal Geographic Society 
• Ranulph Fiennes' expeditions and challenges , Marie Curie 
• Navigation of the James Caird on the Shackleton Expedition , Records of the Canterbury Museum, 2018 Vol. 32: 23–66 Canterbury Museum 2018
• THE ANTARCTIC PHOTOGRAPHS OF FRANK HURLEY, HERBERT PONTING AND CAPTAIN SCOTT  

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Tom Garner is the Features Editor for History of War magazine and also writes for sister publication All About History . He has a Master's degree in Medieval Studies from King's College London and has also worked in the British heritage industry for the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust , as well as for English Heritage and the National Trust . He specializes in Medieval History and interviewing veterans and survivors of conflicts from the Second World War onwards. 

• Timothy Williamson Editor-in-Chief, All About History

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The Stunning Survival Story of Ernest Shackleton and His Endurance Crew

By: Kieran Mulvaney

Updated: May 2, 2024 | Original: October 21, 2020

All year, the ship had been trapped, ice pushing and pinching the hull, the wood howling in protest. Finally, on October 27, 1915, a new wave of pressure rippled across the ice, lifting the ship’s stern and tearing off its rudder and its keel. Freezing water began to rush in.

“She’s going, boys,” came the cry. “It’s time to get off.”

From the moment Ernest Shackleton and his crew aboard the British expedition ship, HMS Endurance had become immobilized in Antarctica's ice 10 months earlier, they had been preparing for this moment. Now, those on board removed their last remaining belongings from the ship and set up camp on the ice. Twenty-five days later, what remained of the wreck convulsed once more, and the Endurance disappeared beneath the ice.

Incredibly, all 27 men under Shackleton's command would survive the grueling Antarctic expedition, but their ship remained sunk and lost to history—until 106 years later. 

On March 9, 2022, a team of scientists and adventurers announced they had  finally located what remained of the Endurance at the bottom of Antarctica's Weddell Sea. The team made the discovery using submersibles and undersea drones and released stunning photos of the long-lost wooden ship where it had lodged in the seabed nearly 10,000 feet deep in clear and icy waters. 

Endurance Is Locked in by Ice

Endurance had left South Georgia for Antarctica on December 5, 1914, carrying 27 men (plus one stowaway, who became the ship’s steward), 69 dogs, and a tomcat erroneously dubbed Mrs. Chippy. The goal of expedition leader Shackleton, who had twice fallen short—once agonizingly so—of reaching the South Pole, was to establish a base on Antarctica’s Weddell Sea coast. 

From there a small party, including himself, would set out on the first crossing of the continent, ultimately arriving at the Ross Sea, south of New Zealand, where another group would be waiting for them, having laid depots of food and fuel along the way.

Two days after leaving South Georgia, Endurance entered the pack ice—the barrier of thick sea ice that stands guard around the Antarctic continent. For several weeks, the ship poked and prodded its way through leads in the ice, gingerly making its way south; but on January 18, a northerly gale pressed the pack hard against the land and pushed the floes tight against each other. Suddenly, there was no way forward, nor any way back. Endurance was beset—in the words of one of the crew, Thomas Orde-Lees, “frozen like an almond in the middle of a chocolate bar.”

They had been within a day’s sailing of their landing place; now the drift of the ice was slowly pushing them farther away with each passing day. There was nothing else to do but to establish a routine and wait out the winter.

Shackleton wrote Alexander Macklin, one of the ship’s surgeons, “did not rage at all, or show outwardly the slightest sign of disappointment; he told us simply and calmly that we must winter in the Pack; explained its dangers and possibilities; never lost his optimism and prepared for winter.”

In private, however, he revealed greater foreboding, quietly expressing to the ship’s captain, Frank Worsley, one winter’s night that, “The ship can’t live in this, Skipper … It may be a few months, and it may be only a question of weeks or even days … but what the ice gets, the ice keeps.”

Survival on an Ice Floe

In the time that passed between abandoning Endurance and watching the ice swallow it up completely, the crew salvaged as many provisions as they could, while sacrificing anything and everything that added weight or would consume valuable resources— including bibles, books, clothing, tools and keepsakes. Some of the younger dogs, too small to pull their weight, were shot, as was, to the chagrin of many, the unfortunate Mrs. Chippy.

The initial plan was to march across the ice toward land, but that was abandoned after the men managed just seven and a half miles in seven days. “There was no alternative,” wrote Shackleton, “but to camp once more on the floe and to possess our souls with what patience we could till conditions should appear more favorable for a renewal of the attempt to escape.” Slowly and steadily, the ice drifted farther to the north; and, on April 7, 1916, the snow-capped peaks of Clarence and Elephant Islands came into view, flooding them with hope.

“The floe has been a good friend to us,” wrote Shackleton in his diary, “but it is reaching the end of its journey, and is liable at any time now to break up.” 

On April 9, it did just that, splitting beneath them with an almighty crack. Shackleton gave the order to break camp and launch the boats, and all at once, they were finally free of the ice that had alternately bedeviled and supported them. 

Now they had a new foe to contend with: the open ocean. It threw freezing spray in their faces and tossed frigid water over them, and it batted the boats from side to side and brought brave men to the fetal position as they battled the elements and seasickness.

Through it all, Captain Worsley navigated through the spray and the squalls, until after six days at sea, Clarence and Elephant Islands appeared just 30 miles ahead. The men were exhausted. Worsley had by that stage not slept for 80 hours. And while some were crippled by seasickness, others were wracked with dysentery. Frank Wild, Shackleton’s second-in-command, wrote that “at least half the party were insane.” Yet they rowed resolutely toward their goal, and on April 15, they clambered ashore on Elephant Island.

Marooned on Elephant Island

It was the first time they had been on dry land since leaving South Georgia 497 days previously. But their ordeal was far from over. The likelihood of anybody coming across them was vanishingly small, and so after nine days of recuperation and preparation, Shackleton, Worsley and four others set out in one of the lifeboats, the James Caird, to seek help from a whaling station on South Georgia, more than 800 miles away. 

For 16 days, they battled monstrous swells and angry winds, baling water out of the boat and beating ice off the sails. “The boat tossed interminably on the big waves under grey, threatening skies,” recorded Shackleton. “Every surge of the sea was an enemy to be watched and circumvented.” Even as they were within touching distance of their goal, the elements hurled their worst at them: “The wind simply shrieked as it tore the tops off the waves,” Shackleton wrote. “Down into valleys, up to tossing heights, straining until her seams opened, swung our little boat.”

The next day, the wind eased off and they made it ashore. Help was almost at hand; but this, too, was not the end. The storms had pushed the James Caird off course, and they had landed on the other side of the island from the whaling station. And so Shackleton, Worsley and Tom Crean set off to reach it by foot—climbing over mountains and sliding down glaciers, forging a path that no human being had ever forged before, until, after 36 hours of desperate hiking, they staggered into the station at Stromness.

'My Name Is Shackleton'

There was no conceivable circumstance under which three strangers could possibly appear from nowhere at the whaling station, and certainly not from the direction of the mountains. And yet here they were: their hair and beards stringy and matted, their faces blackened with soot from blubber stoves and creased from nearly two years of stress and privation.

And old Norwegian whaler recorded the scene when the three men stood before the station manager Thoralf Sørlle:

“Manager say: ‘Who the hell are you?’ And the terrible bearded man in the center of the three say very quietly: ‘My name is Shackleton.’ Me – I turn away and weep.”

Rescue Mission to Elephant Island

Once the other three members of the James Caird had been retrieved, attention turned to rescuing the 22 men remaining on Elephant Island. Yet, after all that had gone before, this final task in many ways proved to be the most trying and time-consuming of all. The first ship on which Shackleton set out ran dangerously low on fuel while trying to navigate the pack ice, and was forced to turn back to the Falkland Islands. The government of Uruguay proffered a vessel that came within 100 miles of Elephant Island before being beaten back by the ice.

Each morning on Elephant Island, Frank Wild, whom Shackleton had left in charge, issued the call for everyone to “Lash up and stow” their belongings. “The Boss may come today!” he declared daily. His companions grew increasingly dispirited and doubtful. “Eagerly on the lookout for the relief ship,” recorded Macklin on August 16, 1916. “Some of the party have quite given up hope of her coming.” Orde-Lees was clearly one of them. “There is no good in deceiving ourselves any longer,” he wrote.

But Shackleton procured a third ship, the Yelcho, from Chile; and finally, on August 30, 1916, the saga of the Endurance and its crew came to an end. The men on the island were settling down to a lunch of boiled seal’s backbone when they spied the Yelcho just off the coast. It had been 128 days since the James Caird had left; within an hour of the Yelcho appearing, all ashore had broken camp and left Elephant Island behind. Twenty months after setting out for the Antarctic, every one of the Endurance crew was alive and safe.

While Shackleton's crew miraculously made it back to England, his ship did not. For more than a century, the Endurance remained among history's most elusive shipwrecks. But in 2022, an international team of marine archaeologists, explorers and scientists located the Endurance at the bottom of the Weddell Sea, approximately four miles south of the position originally recorded when Endurance sank. 

“We have made polar history with the discovery of Endurance, and successfully completed the world’s most challenging shipwreck search,” said John Shears , the leader of Endurance22, the expedition team that used submersibles and drones to locate the wooden ship.

Photos released from the Endurance22 expedition revealed the sunken, three-masted ship in mesmerizing detail, including an image of its stern where its name "ENDURANCE" was visible above a five-pointed star.

Shackleton's Early Death

Ernest Shackleton never did reach the South Pole or crossed Antarctica. He launched one more expedition to the Antarctic, but the Endurance veterans who rejoined him noticed he appeared weaker, more diffident, drained of the spirit that had kept them alive. On January 5, 1922, with the ship at South Georgia, he had a heart attack in his bunk and died. He was just 47.

With his death, Wild took the ship to Antarctica; but it proved unequal to the task, and after a month spent futilely attempting to penetrate the pack, he set a course for Elephant Island. From the safety of the deck, he and his comrades peered through binoculars at the beach where so many of them had lived in fear and hope. 

“Once more I see the old faces & hear the old voices—old friends scattered everywhere,” wrote Macklin. “But to express all I feel is impossible.”

And with that, they turned north one last time and went home.

Alexander, Caroline,  The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition  ( Alfred A. Knopf , 1998) Heacox, Kim,  Shackleton: The Antarctic Challenge ( National Geographic Society, 1999) Huntford, Roland,  Shackleton ( Hodder & Stoughton, 1985) Lansing, Alfred,  Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage ( Perseus Books , 1986) Shackleton, Ernest,  South  ( Macmillan , 1920) Worsley, F.A.,  Shackleton’s Boat Journey ( Hodder & Stoughton, 1940)

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Shackleton’s Journey: A Lovely Illustrated Chronicle of History’s Most Heroic Polar Expedition

By maria popova.

In August of 1914, legendary British explorer Ernest Shackleton led his brave crew of men and dogs on a journey to the end of the world — the enigmatic continent of Antarctica. That voyage — monumental both historically and scientifically — would become the last expedition of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, which stretched from 1888 to 1914. From Flying Eye Books — the children’s book imprint of British indie press Nobrow, which gave us Freud’s comic biography , Blexbolex’s brilliant No Man’s Land and some gorgeous illustrated histories of aviation and the Space Race — comes Shackleton’s Journey ( public library ), a magnificent chronicle by emerging illustrator William Grill , whose affectionate and enchanting colored-pencil drawings bring to life the legendary explorer and his historic expedition.

As Grill tells us in the introduction, Shackleton was a rather extraordinary character:

Shackleton was the second of ten children. From a young age, Shackleton complained about teachers, but he had a keen interest in books, especially poetry — years later, on expeditions, he would read to his crew to lift their spirits. Always restless, the young Ernest left school at 16 to go to sea. After working his way up the ranks, he told his friends, “I think I can do something better, I want to make a name for myself.”

And make it he did. Reflecting on the inescapable allure of exploration, which carried him through his life of adventurous purpose, Shackleton once remarked:

I felt strangely drawn to the mysterious south. I vowed to myself that some day I would go to the region of ice and snow, and go on and on ’til I came to one of the poles of the Earth, the end of the axis on which this great round ball turns.

From the funding and recruitment of the famed expedition, to the pioneering engineering of the Endurance ship, to the taxonomy of crew members, dogs, and supplies, Grill traces Shackleton’s tumultuous journey from the moment the crew set sail to their misfortune-induced change of plans and soul-wrenching isolation “500 miles away from the nearest civilization” to their eventual escape from their icy prison and salvation ashore Elephant Island.

As a lover of dogs and visual lists , especially illustrated lists and dog-themed illustrations , I was especially taken with Grill’s visual inventories of equipment and dogs:

Despite the gargantuan challenges and life-threatening curveballs, Shackleton’s expedition drew to a heroic close without the loss of a single life. It is a story of unrelenting ambition to change the course of history, unflinching courage in the face of formidable setbacks, and above all optimism against all odds — the same optimism that emanates with incredible warmth from Grill’s tender illustrations.

Years later, Shackleton himself captured the spirit that carried them:

I chose life over death for myself and my friends… I believe it is in our nature to explore, to reach out into the unknown. The only true failure would be not to explore at all.

Shackleton’s Journey is an absolute treasure. Complement it with Rachel Sussman’s journey in Shackleton’s footsteps .

Images courtesy of Nobrow

— Published February 26, 2014 — https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/02/26/shackletons-journey-william-grill-nobrow/ —

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Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Crossing of South Georgia

The map of the shackleton crossing.

South Georgia, with the South Sandwich Islands, is a British Overseas Territory in the South Atlantic Ocean. It lies 800 miles southeast of the Falkland Islands, a ruggedly beautiful landscape permanently covered with ice over more than half of its extent.

The only residents of the island are two British Government Officers and the British Antarctic Survey staff who man two research stations.

Captain James Cook made the first landing on South Georgia in 1775, and claimed the territory for King George III. Seal hunting for furs began soon afterwards, followed by whaling activities until the mid-twentieth century.

Due to rapidly changing environmental conditions mapping is vital for the island, and assists in assessing glacier change. Dennis Maps printed the latest map, which was published by British Antarctic Survey for the Government of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.

The Shackleton Crossing

This map shows both the island, and on the reverse, the famous Shackleton Crossing of 1916. Sir Ernest Shackleton had taken part in Captain Scott’s South Pole expeditions, and was now attempting to cross Antarctica from sea to sea via the Pole.

Disaster strikes

His ship Endurance was trapped by pack ice and crushed in the Weddell Sea . Taking to the lifeboats the crew were stranded on Elephant Island, 800 miles southwest of South Georgia. With five companions, Shackleton set off to find help, and landed at King Haakon Bay on South Georgia’s south coast.

Three men waited there while Shackleton and two others set off across the unknown interior to get help at the whaling stations at Stromness Bay on the other side of the island.They had enough provisions for three days, a length of rope, rudimentary equipment, and a sketch map.

A treacherous journey

Disoriented, they headed off in the wrong direction but realising their mistake changed course, and heard the steam whistle of one of the whaling stations calling men to work. But although they now had a clear destination there were still dangerous obstacles to overcome, including a lake in which one man sank to his waist.

Against all odds and despite several setbacks, they managed to reach Stromness, ‘a terrible trio of scarecrows’, eleven days after setting out.

A boat was immediately sent to pick up their fellow crew members in King Haakon Bay, but it took more than three months to evacuate the men stranded on Elephant Island, due to the sea ice blocking the approaches to the island.

Sir Ernest Shackleton died of a heart attack in 1922 during a later expedition, while his ship was moored in South Georgia. At his wife’s request he was buried on the island.

Sir Ernest Shackleton – an inspiring leader

Looking at the map of the Shackleton Crossing provides a small insight into the extraordinary achievement of Sir Ernest Shackleton and his companions. Even today, with sophisticated maps drawn with the help of satellite images, technical clothing and specialist equipment, the journey is an obviously formidable and dangerous one.

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How the 1901 Discovery expedition's polar explorers stayed healthy during their Antarctic journey

by Edward Armston-Sheret, The Conversation

Antarctica is the most inhospitable continent on earth. It's dry, cold, and completely dark for months of the year. Edwardian explorers were some of the first to brave the Antarctic winter, developing new knowledge still drawn upon by scientists today.

The Discovery expedition (1901–4) played a key role in the history of polar exploration. It was led by the Royal Navy commander Robert Falcon Scott , a pioneering polar explorer who died in 1912 after attempting to reach the south pole. The expedition's third lieutenant was Ernest Shackleton , who led three further journeys to the continent.

Both men would become household names, and it was the Discovery expedition that launched their careers. Together, they set a record in December 1902, coming closer to the south pole than anyone had before.

The journey also shaped how both men thought about health, particularly how to prevent and treat scurvy. My research examined how the expedition's officers, medics and organizers sought to keep the explorers healthy in Antarctica, particularly during the polar winter. Because of this work, nobody on the expedition died from poor health (though two men were killed in accidents).

Food was a matter of life or death for polar explorers. Problems with tinned foods are widely believed to have contributed to the demise of the Franklin expedition , which went missing in the Arctic in the late 1840s.

Concerns about food were also driven by the idea that badly preserved meat caused scurvy (though we now know it's caused by a shortage of dietary vitamin C).

Like health experts today, Edwardian explorers were concerned about both the variety of food and its quality. "Give the men good healthy food and I guarantee you will have no diseases," Norwegian Arctic explorer Fridtjof Nansen advised the Discovery expedition's medic before departure.

The expedition's organizers tested food samples to analyze their nutritional content. All tinned foods were also inspected before the expedition to check for signs of decay. Despite these precautions, the explorers found that much of their tinned food was rotten by the time they reached Antarctica. This was due to the poor quality of the canned foods they'd been supplied.

To prevent the men eating contaminated food, the expedition's medics checked every tin before consumption. But, because their tinned food didn't contain much vitamin C, the expedition still suffered an attack of scurvy. This attack only ended once they began eating more fresh seal meat.

Scott and Shackleton now saw fresh food as the best way to prevent and treat scurvy, though neither understood why . We now know that it's because lightly cooked meats contain vitamin C.

The explorers came to view processed foods as more dangerous than fresh foods. Such discussions seem remarkably like recent debates about the health risks of ultra-processed foods. The explorers put emphasis on always having access to fresh meat.

The explorers also worried about the quality of air on the ship.

Scientists now understand air pollution has negative health effects . But in the Edwardian era, poor air quality was understood differently.

Bad air was viewed a threat because of older medical theories that argued poor health was caused by "miasmas" —rotting gases produced by decomposing matter. Cold, drafts and damp were also considered dangerous .

Specially-built ventilation systems were installed in the ship. The system employed two stoves to ventilate the explorers' living quarters with warm air. But once in Antarctica, the system proved unreliable and used lots of fuel. Their ship was also less airtight than expected, meaning it was ventilated without needing to use the specially built systems.

But not everyone agreed on the importance of ventilation. Scott commented that "the question of fresh air and ventilation was one that afforded us a constant field of argument." Even the expeditions' two medics had different views.

One thought it was more important to keep living quarters ventilated by opening the windows every morning. The other argued it was better to keep warm, even if the air wasn't as fresh.

They never resolved this disagreement, but did reach a compromise about how often windows should be opened.

There was more agreement between the explorers was on the importance of exercise. Even in the 1900s, exercise was seen as an important way to stay healthy , able to counter the perceived negative effects of modern, urban living.

In the Antarctic summer, the explorers spent most of their time sledging. This was backbreaking work, pushing the explorers to their physical limits.

But in winter, the explorers would be on or near their ship. To stay healthy they went on daily walks. As the expedition's second in command commented , "There is no doubt that one felt better after a sharp walk over the ice." Such strolls were psychologically important, providing brief opportunities for privacy and reflection. Scott noted : "Throughout most of the winter most of the officers have preferred to take their daily walk alone."

The explorers also played team sports, such as football and hockey and went tobogganing. The expedition's junior medic claimed that the "air and exercise" were the key to sleeping well and maintaining an appetite during the polar winter.

On an Antarctic expedition, staying physically and mentally healthy was a question of survival, so it's no wonder explorers spent so much time thinking about such details.

Many of the health measures employed on Scott and Shackleton's first expedition are similar to those used today. Food, air quality and exercise are still understood as important to good health. But compared to these Edwardian polar explorers, we now have a much better understanding of why.

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The Unique Burial of a Child of Early Scythian Time at the Cemetery of Saryg-Bulun (Tuva)

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Pages:  379-406

In 1988, the Tuvan Archaeological Expedition (led by M. E. Kilunovskaya and V. A. Semenov) discovered a unique burial of the early Iron Age at Saryg-Bulun in Central Tuva. There are two burial mounds of the Aldy-Bel culture dated by 7th century BC. Within the barrows, which adjoined one another, forming a figure-of-eight, there were discovered 7 burials, from which a representative collection of artifacts was recovered. Burial 5 was the most unique, it was found in a coffin made of a larch trunk, with a tightly closed lid. Due to the preservative properties of larch and lack of air access, the coffin contained a well-preserved mummy of a child with an accompanying set of grave goods. The interred individual retained the skin on his face and had a leather headdress painted with red pigment and a coat, sewn from jerboa fur. The coat was belted with a leather belt with bronze ornaments and buckles. Besides that, a leather quiver with arrows with the shafts decorated with painted ornaments, fully preserved battle pick and a bow were buried in the coffin. Unexpectedly, the full-genomic analysis, showed that the individual was female. This fact opens a new aspect in the study of the social history of the Scythian society and perhaps brings us back to the myth of the Amazons, discussed by Herodotus. Of course, this discovery is unique in its preservation for the Scythian culture of Tuva and requires careful study and conservation.

Keywords: Tuva, Early Iron Age, early Scythian period, Aldy-Bel culture, barrow, burial in the coffin, mummy, full genome sequencing, aDNA

Information about authors: Marina Kilunovskaya (Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation). Candidate of Historical Sciences. Institute for the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Dvortsovaya Emb., 18, Saint Petersburg, 191186, Russian Federation E-mail: [email protected] Vladimir Semenov (Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation). Candidate of Historical Sciences. Institute for the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Dvortsovaya Emb., 18, Saint Petersburg, 191186, Russian Federation E-mail: [email protected] Varvara Busova  (Moscow, Russian Federation).  (Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation). Institute for the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences.  Dvortsovaya Emb., 18, Saint Petersburg, 191186, Russian Federation E-mail:  [email protected] Kharis Mustafin  (Moscow, Russian Federation). Candidate of Technical Sciences. Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.  Institutsky Lane, 9, Dolgoprudny, 141701, Moscow Oblast, Russian Federation E-mail:  [email protected] Irina Alborova  (Moscow, Russian Federation). Candidate of Biological Sciences. Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.  Institutsky Lane, 9, Dolgoprudny, 141701, Moscow Oblast, Russian Federation E-mail:  [email protected] Alina Matzvai  (Moscow, Russian Federation). Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.  Institutsky Lane, 9, Dolgoprudny, 141701, Moscow Oblast, Russian Federation E-mail:  [email protected]

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Out of the Centre

Savvino-storozhevsky monastery and museum.

Zvenigorod's most famous sight is the Savvino-Storozhevsky Monastery, which was founded in 1398 by the monk Savva from the Troitse-Sergieva Lavra, at the invitation and with the support of Prince Yury Dmitrievich of Zvenigorod. Savva was later canonised as St Sabbas (Savva) of Storozhev. The monastery late flourished under the reign of Tsar Alexis, who chose the monastery as his family church and often went on pilgrimage there and made lots of donations to it. Most of the monastery’s buildings date from this time. The monastery is heavily fortified with thick walls and six towers, the most impressive of which is the Krasny Tower which also serves as the eastern entrance. The monastery was closed in 1918 and only reopened in 1995. In 1998 Patriarch Alexius II took part in a service to return the relics of St Sabbas to the monastery. Today the monastery has the status of a stauropegic monastery, which is second in status to a lavra. In addition to being a working monastery, it also holds the Zvenigorod Historical, Architectural and Art Museum.

Belfry and Neighbouring Churches

Located near the main entrance is the monastery's belfry which is perhaps the calling card of the monastery due to its uniqueness. It was built in the 1650s and the St Sergius of Radonezh’s Church was opened on the middle tier in the mid-17th century, although it was originally dedicated to the Trinity. The belfry's 35-tonne Great Bladgovestny Bell fell in 1941 and was only restored and returned in 2003. Attached to the belfry is a large refectory and the Transfiguration Church, both of which were built on the orders of Tsar Alexis in the 1650s.  

To the left of the belfry is another, smaller, refectory which is attached to the Trinity Gate-Church, which was also constructed in the 1650s on the orders of Tsar Alexis who made it his own family church. The church is elaborately decorated with colourful trims and underneath the archway is a beautiful 19th century fresco.

Nativity of Virgin Mary Cathedral

The Nativity of Virgin Mary Cathedral is the oldest building in the monastery and among the oldest buildings in the Moscow Region. It was built between 1404 and 1405 during the lifetime of St Sabbas and using the funds of Prince Yury of Zvenigorod. The white-stone cathedral is a standard four-pillar design with a single golden dome. After the death of St Sabbas he was interred in the cathedral and a new altar dedicated to him was added.

Under the reign of Tsar Alexis the cathedral was decorated with frescoes by Stepan Ryazanets, some of which remain today. Tsar Alexis also presented the cathedral with a five-tier iconostasis, the top row of icons have been preserved.

Tsaritsa's Chambers

The Nativity of Virgin Mary Cathedral is located between the Tsaritsa's Chambers of the left and the Palace of Tsar Alexis on the right. The Tsaritsa's Chambers were built in the mid-17th century for the wife of Tsar Alexey - Tsaritsa Maria Ilinichna Miloskavskaya. The design of the building is influenced by the ancient Russian architectural style. Is prettier than the Tsar's chambers opposite, being red in colour with elaborately decorated window frames and entrance.

At present the Tsaritsa's Chambers houses the Zvenigorod Historical, Architectural and Art Museum. Among its displays is an accurate recreation of the interior of a noble lady's chambers including furniture, decorations and a decorated tiled oven, and an exhibition on the history of Zvenigorod and the monastery.

Palace of Tsar Alexis

The Palace of Tsar Alexis was built in the 1650s and is now one of the best surviving examples of non-religious architecture of that era. It was built especially for Tsar Alexis who often visited the monastery on religious pilgrimages. Its most striking feature is its pretty row of nine chimney spouts which resemble towers.

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