Shackleton's Boat Journey

April 1916. Twenty-eight men in desperate condition are stranded on a barren island. Even the whalers of the South Atlantic never venture this far. All are doomed unless their leader can perform another miracle.

Fifteen months earlier, their ship, the Endurance, had been trapped in pack ice in the Antarctic's Weddell Sea. For ten months they had lived aboard ship, until the ice crushed and sank her. For five months the men had drifted on ice floes before making a perilous sea voyage north to land - the lifeless and uninhabited Elephant Island.

Facing the most savage ocean on earth, Sir Ernest Shackleton and his men had only one escape - an unthinkable and impossible journey of 800 miles in an open 23-foot-long boat, the James Caird. There was no chance of success, yet there was no choice.

It became the most courageous and extraordinary achievement in exploration history.

This is the story of that amazing voyage, produced by the James Caird Society and Shackleton's alma mater, Dulwich College, home of the James Caird. Extraordinary scholarship and insight, combined with original photographs from the expedition, make this a marvelous addition to Shackleton lore.

Our earlier release, South: Sir Ernest Shackleton and the Endurance Expedition proved to be the biggest seller in Milestone's history and one of the most acclaimed video releases of 1999. While South focused on primarily the first half of the journey and the destruction of the Endurance, Shackleton's Boat Journey focuses on the amazing odyssey of the James Caird. This story was also the subject of Caroline Alexander's best-selling book, Endurance, published in 1999.