'Shackleton’s Journey' by William Grill

This beautiful, irresistible large-format picture book tells the story of the failed attempt by Ernest Shackleton and the crew of the Endurance to cross Antarctica on foot, starting in 1914. The expedition never set foot on the continent: Endurance was slowly crushed by pack ice in the Weddell Sea and the crew decamped several times across the ice to reach Elephant Island, from whence Shackleton and a few others sailed to South Georgia Island, where there was a whaling station from which they arranged their rescue, but the story is one of success of the human spirit: beset with the harshest physical and psychological conditions for two years (largely spent waiting, the most hazardous of human activities), none of the crew was lost. Grill’s wonderful illustrations capture the bleakness of the environment, the fragility of human presence on the ice and the myriad details upon which survival depended: the (named) dogs, the supplies, the activities of the individual in the crew. “I believe it is our nature to explore, to reach out into the unknown. The only true failure would be to not explore at all.” – Ernest Shackleton

April 2016