Chasing Shackleton: Re-creating the World's Greatest Journey of Survival - Hardcover

Jarvis, Tim

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0062282735 ISBN 13: 9780062282736

Publisher: William Morrow, 2014

Synopsis

“Mr. Jarvis’s tribute to Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition has had a danger and heroism that are worthy of the original.” —The Guardian

In this extraordinary adventure memoir and tie-in to the PBS documentary, Tim Jarvis, one of the world's leading explorers, describes his modern-day journey to retrace, for the first time ever—and in period clothing and gear—the legendary 1914 expedition of Sir Ernest Shackleton.

In early 1914, British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton and his team sailed for Antarctica, attempting to be the first to reach the South Pole. Instead of glory, Shackleton and his crew found themselves in an epic struggle for survival: a three-year odyssey on the ice and oceans of the Antarctic that endures as one of the world’s most famous tales of adventure, endurance, and leadership ever recorded.

In the winter of 2013, celebrated explorer Tim Jarvis, a veteran of multiple polar expeditions, set out to recreate Sir Ernest Shackleton’s treacherous voyage over sea and mountain, outfitted solely with authentic equipment—clothing, boots, food, and tools—from Shackleton’s time, a feat that has never been successfully accomplished.

Chasing Shackleton is the remarkable record of Jarvis and his team’s epic journey. Beautifully designed and illustrated with dozens of photographs from the original voyage and its modern reenactment, it is a visual feast for readers and historians alike, and an essential new chapter in the story that has inspired adventurers across every continent for a century.

About this title

About the Author

Explorer and environmental scientist Tim Jarvis has made four previous expeditions to Antarctica and the high Arctic. His re-creation of Sir Douglas Mawson’s 1913 trek across Antarctica was made into an award-winning documentary, Mawson: Life and Death in Antarctica. In 1999, Jarvis made the fastest unsupported trek to the South Pole, arriving in 47 days, and in 2001, he completed the first unsupported crossing of Australia’s Great Victoria Desert, covering 1,100 kilometers in less than a month. In 2009, he was selected for Yale University’s World Fellows program. A member of the Order of Australia, Jarvis lives in Adelaide, Australia, with his wife, Elizabeth, and their young family.

From the Back Cover

In celebration of the centenary of Shackleton’s legendary journey, join Tim Jarvis on his quest to become the first to re-create what sir edmund hillary called “the greatest survival story of all time”

1914–1916

One hundred years ago, in early 1914, famed British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton embarked for the South Pole on the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, hoping to make the first land crossing of Antarctica. For three years there was no word from the expedition, and most assumed the men had perished, as so many polar explorers had before them. Remarkably, however, the crew was very much alive, thanks to Shackleton’s leadership. After their ship, the Endurance, was crushed by Antarctic ice and the men trapped on a small, inhospitable island, cut off from all hope of rescue, Shackleton decided to attempt a risky eighthundred-mile voyage across the notoriously treacherous Southern Ocean. For seventeen days, he and five of his crew battled constant gales, terrible cold, and mountainous seas in a leaking 22.5-foot wooden boat. In one of history’s greatest feats of navigation, they succeeded in landing on the small, remote island of South Georgia. Finally, they faced a climb over precipitous, heavily glaciated mountains to reach the whaling station at Stromness on the other side—a journey that would challenge the limits of today’s top mountaineers. Ultimately, Shackleton was able to rescue all twenty-two crew members—a heroic triumph of endurance and leadership.

January 2013

Using authentic period clothing, equipment, and rations, and sailing a precise replica of Shackleton’s small, keel-less boat, explorer Tim Jarvis leads a six-man crew in an attempt to re-create Shackleton’s historic crossings for the first time. A veteran of Antarctica’s breathtaking frozen wastes, Jarvis finds himself facing one of the most dangerous journeys ever willingly undertaken, quickly gaining a firsthand appreciation for the extraordinary challenges that Shackleton overcame. While documenting the devastating impact a century of climate change has had on the region’s ice caps and glaciers, the trek proves to be a relentless struggle against poor odds and inhospitable conditions—for even today, the remote Antarctic remains as fierce and unforgiving as ever before.

Vividly illustrated with historical and contemporary photography, Chasing Shackleton tells the unforgettable story of these two expeditions, separated by nearly a hundred years but unified in the spirit of epic discovery, adventure, and survival.

Reviews

Here’s a book whose subtitle employs “world’s greatest” accurately, speaking of Ernest Shackleton’s astonishing 1916 Antarctic rescue. Author-adventurer Jarvis has re-created in nearly every detail that harrowing trip (“in a replica James Caird using traditional navigation” and “period gear and equipment”) across the Southern Ocean from Elephant Island to South Georgia and up and down its mountainous terrain. Though others have tried this and failed, Jarvis, with help and patronage from Shackleton’s granddaughter Alexandra and a team of brave, seaworthy men, made it, and the expedition’s nuts and bolts (financial, emotional, and literal) are detailed here, accompanied by fascinating quotes from the accounts of members of Shackleton’s original journey. Nearly every page of this oversize book features a map, or an illustration, or a period or contemporary photo, from close-ups of gnarled hands stitching the replica sails and the boat-making process to the seagoing men sleeping, just barely, under reindeer-skin blankets. The PBS documentary tie-in will flesh out this thrilling tale, but the book itself is a treasure-trove of minutiae and derring-do for both explorers and those who will simply gaze in wonderment. --Eloise Kinney

Edition details

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0062282735
• ISBN 13: 9780062282736
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272