Sailing ship Endurance trapped and crushed by ice in the Antarctic, 1915

Photograph of the sailing ship Endurance trapped and crushed by ice in the Antarctic, 1915. "The long, long night" -- caption. From a plate in a book: Ernest Henry Shackleton. The heart of the Antarctic; being the story of the British Antarctic Expedition 1907-1909. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott company, 1909.; Ernest Shackleton missed out on the race to the South Pole, but decided instead to traverse the entire continent. In 1914 his ship the Endurance became trapped and crushed by ice, forcing the crew to drift on ice floes for almost a year. While most of his men languished on an island near the Antarctic coast, Shackleton set off with five companions in a small open boat for the nearest permanent settlement, a small whaling village on South Georgia Island over 800 miles away throught strom-wracked seas. Incredibly, his crew were rescued without a single loss of life.