Escape from the Antarctic is a selection from Ernest Shackleton's book South, describing the most remarkable part of Shackleton's disastrous expedition to the Antarctic in 1914-17. Escape tells the portion of the story where Shackleton and his men have been marooned with few supplies on an Antarctic island after their ship is crushed by pack ice, and his decision to set out across 800 miles of forbidding ocean – "the most tempestuous storm-swept area of water in the world" (pg. 3) – in a small boat with a handful of men to the tiny island of South Georgia. On this island, the exhausted men then traverse a glacier thought impassable to find aid at a whaling station.

It is an incredible feat, and for the most part Shackleton's prose matches it. It is quite a dry account, with only the occasional flair, but the feats described are remarkable no matter how they are told. It is impossible when reading not to be intimidated by the cold, terror and brute force of Antarctic nature, and impossible not to be staggered by the ability of weak, exhausted men to resist it. Anyone who can tell first-hand of crashing ice, howling hurricanes and gigantic waves – "so small was our boat and so great were the seas that often our sail flapped idly in the calm between the crests of two waves" (pg. 15) – is always going to find ears for his story. ( )

Sometimes when you read these 'mini' books (this one 88p), they're too short to make much of an impact.
This is such an absolutely outstanding account of human doggedness and strengt of character that it will remain with you forever.
Stuck in an Antarctic camp, with winter approaching, low rations and some men unable to continue, Shackleton and his five best men, leave the other twenty-two and go to seek help. Braving an 800 mile voyage, in a very primitive boat across the gale-tossed Southern Ocean, (endless baling; minimal food; shifts on duty relieved by a rest in a cold wet sleeping bag); they finally reach South Georgia and the whaling stations.
It then requires a superhuman journney through uncharted land....glaciers, crevasses, waterfalls.Their initial 'reasonably comfortable' billet in a cave has 15 foot icicles in dooway.. Leaving three of the six at the camp, Shackleton, Worsley and Crean set out for the final stage to find help...the most moving passage is their first intimation that they'd done it:
"At 630 am, I thought I heard the sound of a steam whistle. I dared not be certain, but I knew that the men at the whaling station would be called from their beds about that time. Descending to the camp I told the others and in intense excitement we watched the chronometer for seven o'clock, when the whalers would be summoned to work.Right to the minute the steam whistle came to us, borne clearly on the wing across the intervening miles of rock and snow.....It was the first sound created by outside human agency that had come to our ears since we left Stromness Bay in December 1914."
But there are still more hazardous miles to cross, always thinking of the two abandoned groups of comrades waiting on them. And even on arrival, there is still much to go wrong as successive boats have to be summoned from various local countries, but fail, repeatedly to reach the first group due to encroaching pack ice...
Completely unputdownable. The reader will never forget the utter grimness of their experience:
"Supper consisting of a pannikin of hot milk, one of our precious biscuits and a cold penguin leg each."
"The chafing of our legs by our wet clothes, which had not been changed now for seven months."
"The soup , which was particularly good that day, consisting of boiuled seal's backbone, limpets and seaweed." ( )

As the first World War ravaged Europe, Ernest Shackleton led the Imperial Trans Antarctic Expedition in hopes of crossing the Antarctic. There were two parties, one which laid out supply dumps and the second which would make the crossing. The second party was marooned on Elephant Island after ice crushed their ship the Endurance, 800 miles away from the nearest settlement, at the onset of winter. At this point, Shackleton made the desperate decision to split the group: the less fit men would remain at base camp while Shackleton and five other men would seek help. (more)