Antarctica Cruise Logbook - Hanseatic Cruise from Ushuaia to Antarctic Peninsula

In 1914, Ernest Shackleton led an expedition of 28 men to Antarctica on the ship Endurance. Their story is an amazing one. The Endurance became entrapped in the ice of the Weddell Sea in January 1915, and drifted with the ice until it was crushed and sank in November 1915. At that point, the 28 men used three small boats rescued from the Endurance to sail the perilous sea to Elephant Island, arriving on April 17, 1916. Shackleton and 5 of his crew then took one of the small boats and sailed the 800 miles to South Georgia Island. In spite of the fact that they had to make this winter crossing without modern instruments, they arrived on South Georgia 16 days after leaving their 22 comrades camped at Point Wild on Elephant Island. Unfortunately, they had landed on the wrong side of South Georgia, and had to traverse the mountainous, glacier-filled island in order to reach the whaling station on the other side. Miraculously, when Shackleton and the 6 men returned to Elephant Island on August 30 after several unsuccessful tries, all 22 men were still alive. Shackleton never lost a man in all of his years as an explorer.

We took the Zodiacs from the Hanseatic to see Point Wild up close. The wet, rocky, cold spit of land was very small and surrounded by glaciers, high rocky cliffs, and the sea. Seeing Point Wild and Elephant Island and imagining how the men felt when they saw their captain sail away, only to return 4 months later, was both sobering and exhilarating.