Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/Voyage of the James Caird

Voyage of the James Caird

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the TFAR nomination of the article below. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/requests). Please do not modify this page unless you are renominating the article at TFAR. For renominations, please add   to the top of the discussion and   at the bottom, then complete a new TFAR nom underneath.

The result was: scheduled for Today's featured article/May 10, 2014 by BencherliteTalk 14:38, 24 April 2014 (UTC)



The voyage of the James Caird was a small-boat journey undertaken by Sir Ernest Shackleton and five companions from Elephant Island in the South Shetland Islands to South Georgia in the southern Atlantic Ocean, a distance of 800 nmi. In October 1915, Endurance, the ship of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914–17, had been crushed by pack ice and sunk in the Weddell Sea, leaving the expedition stranded thousands of miles from safety. In April 1916, when the floe on which they were camped broke up, the crew made their way in the ship's lifeboats to the remote Elephant Island, where Shackleton quickly decided that the best chance for rescue 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, who had helped finance the expedition. Surviving a series of dangers, including a near capsizing, the boat reached South Georgia after a voyage lasting 16 days. Shackleton subsequently traversed an icy mountain pass to a whaling station on South Georgia's north coast, where he was able to organise the relief of the Elephant Island party, and to return his men home without loss of life. History has come to consider the James Caird's voyage as one of the greatest small-boat journeys ever accomplished.
 * Most recent similar articles: Aeneas Mackintosh (March 14, 2014)
 * Main editors: User:Brianboulton
 * Promoted: 2008
 * Reasons for nomination: Anniversary of the end of the journey
 * Support as nominator. — howcheng  {chat} 06:07, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Support. High quality article and educational. Nice relevant date. &mdash; Cirt (talk) 06:43, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Support: Blurb needs trimming – I'll do this. Thanks to Howcheng for spotting the date relevance, which I had overlooked. Brianboulton (talk) 07:38, 23 April 2014 (UTC)