ANTARCTIC ADVENTURE AND RESEARCH 



Shackleton, 1914 



The most remarkable of all Antarctic voyages as 

 regards dangers encountered and vanquished is that 

 of Shackleton in the ''Endurance." He planned a 

 trans-Antarctic expedition, which involved the land- 

 ing from the ''Endurance" of a party of men on the 

 Filchner Shelf who were to march across the continent 

 to depots laid down on the Ross Sea side by sledging 

 parties from the "Aurora." On December 5th, 1914, 

 the "Endurance" left South Georgia for the Weddell 

 Sea and entered the pack near the Sandwich Isles on 

 December 7th. The ship made a fair voyage to the 

 south through the pack ice and on New Year's Day 

 was just north of 68° S. The explorers were blocked 

 by the ice early in January near latitude 70° S., but 

 on the 8th reached open water and soon passed the 

 record of Ross (1843) ^^^ then came in sight of 

 Coats Land in 72° 34' S. They obtained shallow 

 soundings here, of 155 fathoms, with a bottom com- 

 posed of igneous pebbles (see Figure 7). They dis- 

 covered new land (named after Caird) between Coats 

 Land and Leopold Land. The most prominent feature 

 is a gigantic ice promontory which projects some fifty 

 miles from the continent. This mass of ice is fifty 

 miles wide and is probably floating, as the sea is 1,300 

 fathoms deep hereabouts. Two great glaciers were dis- 

 covered just to the south. 



On the eighteenth of January, 191 5, the "En- 

 durance" was beset off the north end of Leopold Land. 

 The whole of February was spent off Vahsel Bay about 



68 



