Dark blue cloth binding with silvered image of Endurance on the front board.

This account of the Endurance expedition was based on extensive interviews with Shackleton and the diaries of his fellow explorers. Shackleton found the recollection of the ordeal extremely painful, and often insisted that he could not go through with it. It recounts the disastrous attempt that he made to cross Antarctica 1914-1917, illustrated with the evocative photographs of Frank Hurley, the expedition photographer. The striking cover illustration derives from Hurley’s midwinter photograph of Endurance.

Shackleton’s ship, the Endurance, was caught in the pack ice and broken up, leaving the entire crew stranded on the ice floe with three lifeboats and no hope of rescue. That Shackleton succeeded in getting all of his men to safety with no lives lost contrasts well with Scott’s heroic but fatal march to the South Pole in 1911-12. This copy was dedicated to King George V by Shackleton himself; a presentation inscription reads: "Your Majesty’s flag, entrusted to us, as a spur to endeavour, upheld us through the scenes recorded in these pages; which my comrades and myself are graciously permitted to present to you Sir Ernest H. Shackleton Nov 1919." The flag was flown over the camp on the sea ice throughout their ordeal, and was eventually returned to King George V by Shackleton, May 30th 1917. It remains in the Royal Collection.