Portal:History/Featured article/April, 2010



The voyage of the James Caird was an open boat journey from Elephant Island in the South Shetland Islands to South Georgia in the southern Atlantic Ocean, a distance of 800 nmi. Undertaken by Sir Ernest Shackleton and five companions, its objective was to obtain rescue for the main body of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914–17, trapped on Elephant Island after the loss of its ship Endurance. Historians have ranked the James Caird's voyage as one of the greatest open boat journeys ever accomplished.

In October 1915 Endurance had been crushed and sunk by pack ice in the Weddell Sea, leaving Shackleton and the crew stranded on an unreliable ice surface thousands of miles from safety. During the following months the party drifted northward until April 1916, when the floe on which they were camped broke up. They then made their way in lifeboats to the remote and inaccessible Elephant Island, where Shackleton quickly decided that the most effective means of obtaining relief for his beleaguered party would be to sail one of the lifeboats to South Georgia. Of the three lifeboats, the James Caird was deemed the strongest and most likely to survive the journey. It had been named by Shackleton after Sir James Key Caird, a Dundee jute manufacturer and philanthropist, whose sponsorship had helped finance Shackleton's expedition. Before its voyage the boat was strengthened and adapted by ship's carpenter Harry McNish, to withstand the mighty seas of the Southern Ocean. It carried a six-man crew led by Shackleton, with Endurance's captain, Frank Worsley, responsible for navigation.

After surviving a series of dangers, including a near capsize, the boat reached South Georgia after a voyage lasting 16 days. The crew overcame a final peril in securing a safe landing on the exposed coast. Shackleton was subsequently able to organise the relief of the Elephant Island party, and to return his men home without loss of life. After the end of the First World War the James Caird was brought back from South Georgia to England, and is now on permanent display at Shackleton's old school, Dulwich College.

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