Shackleton: The Greatest Story of Survival

Exploration has been the greatest driving force in my life

since I was young.

And exploring this alien landscape of Antarctica…

is a challenge unlike anywhere else on Earth.

Over 100 years ago, Antarctica was more than just a challenge.

It was the very limit of human knowledge and scientific understanding.

The last unexplored continent on Earth.

It's the beginning of the 20th century…

…the heroic era of polar exploration.

These are the astronauts of their time

and Antarctica was their moon.

Lift off! We have lift off!

Explorers from around the world…

pit themselves against the immense wilderness of Antarctica

in search of glory and discovery.

But this is a vast, cold, isolated and entirely unforgiving place.

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What do you do when it all goes horribly wrong?

The journals and film recorded

by Sir Ernest Shackleton and his crew of 27…

answers that very question.

The story of our attempt is the tale of the white warfare

of the South.

The struggles, the disappointments…

and the endurance of this small party of Britishers…

make a story which is unique in the history of Antarctic exploration.

I asked myself why on Earth one comes to these parts of the Earth?

I think we all have a sense of adventure in us

and it manifests in different ways with different people.

Life's true adventure is understanding what the meaning of it all is

and I think that drives medical research, it drives artistic self-expression,

it drives people's desires to cross ice caps or climb mountains.

That has burned brightly in me since childhood…

and I've never grown out of it. I've always just had that

desire to keep on discovering

and it's seen me go to the far limits of human endurance

and to the ends of the world as a means to do that.

Environmental scientist

- Tim Jarvis. - Explorer Tim Jarvis.

Australian explorer Tim Jarvis lost

more than 50 pounds of body weight

recreating the journey of Sir Douglas Mawson.

In doing the expeditions the old way, essentially disadvantaging

yourself by using a 100-year-old equipment

you get about as close as you can to experiencing

that which they experienced a 100 years prior.

At least I can honestly say that…

I've been served up the same sorts of conditions that he had.

Explorer Tim Jarvis is the only man to have ever recreated

the harrowing journey of Ernest Shackleton using the same inadequate clothing

and equipment as they had back in 1914.

There have been many instances along the way…

some falls in the mountains where you do wonder

whether it be your last move you make.

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I'm so excited about getting down here.

I mean, I feel I really come alive when I'm in a place like this.

You get much closer to the spirit of the great man,

if you're following in his footsteps.

But also you get closer to this more resourceful version of you

that emerges when you find yourself in these places.

You know, they've been the theatre for so many fascinating journeys

in the past that you can't help but be inspired.

We are 830 nautical miles Southeast of the Falkland Islands

headed to the whaling island of South Georgia

where Shackleton began his imperial transantarctic expedition.

There remained but one great main object of Antarctic journeyings.

The crossing of the South Polar continent from sea to sea.

The distance will be roughly 1,800 miles.

And the first half of this, from the Weddell Sea to the pole…

will be over unknown ground.

Every step will be an advance in geographical science…

and this report will prove of great scientific interest.

An expedition of this scale would require

a budget of millions in today's money.

To fund his dreams of the South, Shackleton would rely on his ability

to convince people of the cause.

Shackleton had this way of getting people

excited about what they were going to do, you know,

he offered them things that money couldn't buy.

So if you were a wealthy benefactor thinking about

maybe putting money into a polar expedition,

Shackleton could name a mountain range or a coastline after you

and you had immortality guaranteed. So it's a clever way of doing it.

This wasn't Shackleton's first attempt to make history.

In 1907 he was hired to lead the Nimrod Expedition to the Antarctic.

The mission was to be

the first to reach the South Pole.

Although they set a new record for the most southerly point ever reached.

They were forced to turn back

just 97 nautical miles short of their target.

Shackleton and his men, starving and exhausted,

returned to base inspired by what they'd seen…

but frustrated with how close they'd come.

It would take Shackleton almost seven years to raise the funding

and plan this expedition.

Personally putting everything on the line this time.

The stakes couldn't be higher.

Long days of preparation were over and the adventure lay ahead.

Our dreams coming close two zero five. i

I gave the order to heave anchor at 8:45 a.m.

on December 5th 1914

and the clanking of the windlass broke for us the last link with civilization.

The fate of the expedition

now rested on the shoulders of the 28 crew of the Endurance.

Shackleton was a consummate leader of men in those days,

on those early expeditions, a leader of people.

And he got about 3,000 applicants for the 27 places on the expedition team.

And his recruitment process involved interviews

that involved him throwing really curly…

…interesting questions at people

just to see how they would react…

…and if there was someone who was too rigid in their thinking

perhaps again, they weren't the kind of…

…person who had the capacity for lateral thinking

and problem solving ability that he was looking for.

He always wanted people who saw a positive in any situation.

And you need that for…

successful expeditioning, or indeed life.

And in the end how relevant…

…those skills turned out to be.

The crew seemed a strong one.

And as I looked at the man I felt confidence increasing.

The Weddell Sea was notoriously inhospitable,

and already we knew that it sternest face was turned towards us.

What welcome was the Weddell Sea preparing for us?

To navigate these southern waters, timing is everything.

In the relative warm months of summer the sea is less frozen

and large lanes of open water provide passage to the continent.

We're just staring out on a scene of…

of brash ice and pancake ice. Pancake ice is where the…

surface just starts to freeze over and that's what we're starting to see.

And it's the beginning of the formation, of course, of pack ice.

As Endurance went south they of course started to experience…

pack ice, initially probably very much like this.

And that of course became thicker and thicker and thicker.

And Worsley on board Endurance was a wonderful skipper

and Shackleton was no slouch himself.

So between them and some of the other sailors on board they…

they knew what they were doing in terms of getting through pack ice,

but you're really pushing through leads, which are the gaps between…

the bits of larger pack. And you try to force the ship

through there and push the pack ice apart.

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Expedition cameraman Frank Hurley recorded the efforts of the crew

as they navigated their way through the ice.

The fearless Australian would perch himself almost anywhere

to capture the dynamic imagery…

…he was so famous for.

The last 250 miles have been through close pack

alternating with fine long leads and stretches of open water.

Under the bows and alongside great slabs of ice

were being turned over and slid back on the floe,

or driven down and under the ice or ship.

In this way the Endurance would split a two-foot to three-foot floe

a square mile in extent.

It was important that we should make progress towards

our goal as rapidly as possible.

In order to keep the expedition on schedule,

Shackleton had to make land before the ocean froze over for winter.

When the pack ice starts to form on the surface of the sea,

ultimately it forms an apron around Antarctic i

which actually almost doubles the size of the continent,

which is incredible when you think of it.

And the ice can be anything from 20 centimetres thick

all the way through to three or four metres thick.

And of course the further south you go the thicker it gets.

And it comes a point where you need to make a judgment

about whether you're prepared to keep the engines running

and push further south, or try and push further south

into the teeth of this incredibly thick ice…

all the while thinking, how are we going to get home at the end of this.

I was anxious for certain reasons

to winter the Endurance in the Weddell Sea.

But the difficulty of finding a safe harbour might be very great.

It was as though the spirits of the Antarctic

were pointing us to the backward track.

The track we were determined not to follow.

Our desire was to make easting as well as southing,

so as to reach the land, if possible,

East of Ross's farthest South, and well East of Coates Land.

The unusually abundant sea ice ground their progress to a crawl,

with the rapidly freezing sea water trapping them time after time.

The ice was only getting thicker, and open water was slowly disappearing.

They were reaching dead ends, having to turn around,

chip through the ice,

sit and wait it out sometimes when they came completely stuck

for the ice open up again, break up and move.

And it was a pretty torturous process trying to get through.

The name of the game was to keep pushing south as best one could,

and sometimes open leads of water

in amongst the pack ice would force you to go left and right,

and not doing much in the way of southerly travel.

But you were constantly focused on trying to get south as best you could.

The situation became dangerous that night.

We pushed into the pack in the hope of reaching open water beyond

and found ourselves after dark in a pool, which was growing smaller and smaller.

Ultimately, they reached…

a dead end.

Pack ice closed in around the vessel…