Sir Ernest Shackleton - DVD's and Videos, Books and Pictures

Shackleton's expeditions:

DVD  and Video

Shackleton (2001)
Dramatization

The highly acclaimed film of Shackleton's 1914 ill fated attempt to cross Antarctica via the South Pole and the subsequent heroic adventure. Starring Kenneth Branagh, magnificent as Shackleton with Lorcan Cranitch and Mark McGann as his loyal lieutenants Frank Wild and Tom Crean. The ice scenes and atmosphere of the deep south are wonderfully portrayed.
DVD  DVD

South - Ernest Shackleton and the Endurance Expedition (1919)
Original footage

The actual footage shot by Frank Hurley on Shackleton's ill fated Trans-Antarctic expedition. Hurley's camera work gives a good indication of what the 28 men endured. No drama could take the place of the actual footage from the expedition seen in this documentary. It is spellbinding. Lack of the men's voices (it is the 1910's after all) and lack of narration is no impediment, the pictures tell the story well enough, and the piano soundtrack just adds to the feeling of time gone by.
DVD  DVD

Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure (2001)
IMAX dramatization

The only documentary that traces the actual steps of the explorers' blessed journey. While providing a concise summary of the Shackleton team's 1914-16 expedition, this breathtaking IMAX feature employs exacting re-creations and flyover footage (from 1999 and 2000) of the same harsh landscapes that Shackleton and his men traversed, by land and sea, during their ill-fated voyage. As with most IMAX films, climactic moments are driven by a bombastic score, and the harshest facts of the Shackleton journey (e.g., sacrificing beloved dogs for food and euthanasia) are omitted for family viewing. What matters here are the visuals (both vintage and contemporary), and they're absolutely magnificent, conveying the sheer horror--and divine beauty--of the greatest survival story of all time.
DVD    DVD

A retelling of Sir Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated expedition to Antarctica in 1914-1916, featuring new footage of the actual locations and interviews with surviving relatives of key expedition members, plus archived audio interviews with expedition members and a generous helping of the footage and still photos shot on the expedition. Narrated by Liam Neeson.
DVD    DVD

Books

Star book

Endurance, The Greatest Adventure Story Ever Told
Alfred Lansing (Preface)
Buy USA     Audiobook
Buy UK    Audiobook

Ernest Shackleton never lost a single man in Antarctica. This is the story that begin with the epic intent of being the first to cross the Antarctic continent. Shackleton and his men never even came close to the pole, but theirs was one of the greatest adventures of all time.

His ship, Endurance, was trapped and then crushed by sea ice, leaving Shackleton and 27 men adrift on ice floes. The story of how Shackleton saved all of them and reached South Georgia Island is one of the epics in the history of survival.

A story so incredible that if it were written as fiction it would probably be regarded as too fantastic to be taken seriously.

  Star book

South with Endurance: Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition, 1914-1917
Frank Hurley
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Frank Hurley, a young Australian photographer was crucial to the 1914-1917 expedition, not least in that it was the promised sale of the photographs after the voyage that provided for a substantial amount of the funding. The book is an oversized collection featuring all of the official photographer's pictures (including several previously unpublished color plates). The stark black and white images of the ship and its men caught in an ocean of ice are both beautiful and chilling.

Photography buffs, historians and adventure lovers alike will relish the images from one who was surely one of history's greatest documentary photographers. There are almost 500 photos in black and white and colour.

If you are a fan of Antarctic exploration then this wonderful book should be in your library.

South: Ernest Shackleton
Shackleton's own words
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The original account of Shackleton's journey as documented by himself, illustrated with classic black and white photographs that I've seen on a regular basis since being interested in Antarctica some 20 years ago and still consider to be among the best pictures of Antarctica ever taken.

Shackleton's Way, Leadership Lessons from the Great Antarctic Explorer
Margot Morrell, Stephanie Capparell
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A handbook for leaders. The authors, a Wall Street Journal reporter and a financial expert, use the Shackleton story to illustrate principles of leadership, including the importance of hiring an outstanding crew, creating camaraderie and leading effectively in a crisis. With a sampling of Frank Hurley photographs, and interviews with business leaders who have been inspired by "The Boss." Shackleton mania is continuing apace, this the second (and best) book for executives on Shackleton's instinctive leadership abilities.

Melding superb research and the extraordinary expedition photography of Frank Hurley, The Endurance by Caroline Alexander is a stunning work of history, adventure, and art which chronicles "one of the greatest epics of survival in the annals of exploration."  Most skilfully Alexander constructs the expedition's character through its personalities--the cast of veteran explorers, scientists, and crew--with aid from many previously unavailable journals and documents. We learn, for instance, that carpenter and shipwright Henry McNish, or "Chippy," was "neither sweet-tempered nor tolerant," and that Mrs. Chippy, his cat, was "full of character." Such firsthand descriptions, paired with 170 of Frank Hurley's intimate photographs, which are comprehensively assembled here for the first time, penetrate the hulls of the Endurance and these tough men.

Shackleton's Boat Journey
F.A. Worsley
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On 1 August 1914, on the eve of World War I, Sir Ernest Shackleton and his hand-picked crew embarked in HMS Endurance from London's West India Dock, for an expedition to the Antarctic. It was to turn into one of the most breathtaking survival stories of all time. Even as they coasted down the channel, Shackleton wired back to London to offer his ship to the war effort. The reply came from the First Lord of the Admiralty, one Winston Churchill: "Proceed". And proceed they did. When the Endurance was trapped and finally crushed to splinters by pack ice in late 1915, they drifted on an ice floe for five months, before getting to open sea and launching three tiny boats as far as the inhospitable, storm-lashed Elephant Island. They drank seal oil and ate baby albatross (delicious, apparently.) From there Shackleton himself and seven others- -the author among them--went on, in a 22-foot open boat, for an unbelievable 800 miles, through the Antarctic seas in winter, to South Georgia and rescue. It is an extraordinary story of courage and even good-humour among men who must have felt certain, secretly, that they were going to die. Worsley's account, first published in 1940, captures that bulldog spirit exactly: uncomplaining, tough, competent, modest and deeply loyal. It's gripping, and strangely moving.

Shackleton's Forgotten Men
Lennard Bickel
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In Shackleton's Forgotten Men Lennard Bickel honours the memory of a group of men who carried out some of the most heroic and devoted journeys ever made in Antarctica. This is the stirring account of the little-known, tragic expedition launched by Ernest Shackleton in 1915 to provide support for his own Antarctic expedition that would follow. These journeys were made to set up depots across the Great Ice Shelf to supply the coming Shackleton expedition, a crossing of the Antarctic continent from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea.

But the group lost their ship and supplies when a fierce polar gale ripped the ship from its moorings, and had to haul sledges almost 2000 miles across the hostile interior of Antarctica. Despite enduring unimaginable deprivation, from bad weather to disease and madness, this heroic band accomplished their mission, laying the way for Shackleton and his men. But Shackleton and his men never came and the drama of their own disastrous journey has until now overshadowed the extraordinary story of those brave men who came before them. Lennard Bickel tells the story of these forgotten heroes in a gripping account, drawing largely from interviews with one team member, Dick Richards, and from the diary of another.

Shackleton's Boat Journey - the voyage of the James Caird
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A fully illustrated biography of the boat that took Shackleton and his small rescue party from Elephant Island to South Georgia on a mission to get help for the rest of the team left stranded by the sinking of their ship the Endurance in the Antarctic pack ice.

Written by the founder of the James Caird Society and available via their website.

Note, the James Caird is preserved intact and displayed in Dulwich college London. The James Caird Society arrange dinners close to the boat on a regular basis.

Sir Ernest Shackleton, the Anglo-Irish explorer, never achieved his goal of reaching the South Pole, though he was knighted in 1909 for having come within 100 miles. With bravery matched only by his theatricality, Shackleton sought to top that accomplishment by landing on one side of Antarctica and travelling the width of the icy continent by sledge. What might have been a great exploratory journey turned into a raw struggle for survival when his ship became trapped in pack ice, and he was forced to lead his team on a desperate trek across hundreds of miles of the world's most dangerous terrain. He made it home, but even his stature as one of Edwardian England's greatest heroes could not save Shackleton from financial risk taking; he ended his life mired in debt. Roland Huntford's biography presents a balanced and lively portrait of a man who was, depending on which of his contemporaries you asked, a national hero or a contemptible rogue. --Robert McNamara A must read book if you are interested in Shackleton and his Antarctic expeditions.

Mrs. Chippy's Last Expedition

With an introduction by Lord Mouser-Hunt, this is the journal of Mrs Chippy, the cat who accompanied the carpenter Harry "Chippy" McNeish on the Shackleton's "Endurance" expedition in 1914.

 

Leif Mills' excellent biography of Frank Wild provides long overdue insight into the man who was much more than "Shackleton's right-hand man." Mills draws on many letters and diaries to illustrate the family background, values and experiences that made Wild who he was: a remarkably brave, stolid and popular explorer who was a leader in his own right. Antarctica enthusiasts will find this book a valuable addition to their collections.

Frank Hurley: A Photographer's Life
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The definitive book on the extraordinary Australian photographer Frank Hurley. Hurley is know for the photographic record he made with Sir Ernest Shackleton's Endurance expedition of 1914 to 1916 but he had a career that spanned six decades. He covered both World Wars One and Two and published many books but in all of this time, no one ever really knew the real Frank Hurley. Adventurer, artist, film maker, showman, he was an enigma and was definitely controversial. A brilliant book.

Wordie's career as both explorer and academic geologist opened with his participation in Shackleton's epic Endurance expedition of 1914-16, where he proved one of the most resilient of those stranded in appalling conditions on Elephant Island. He continued to lead arduous expeditions to the Arctic well into his forties, while building his reputation as an academic and mentor to new generations of explorers and mountaineers. During and after the Second World War he was instrumental in safeguarding British strategic interests in the Antarctic territories, and later rose to be President of the Royal Geographical Society and Master of St John's College, Cambridge.

Antarctic Eyewitness

This book combines Charles Laseron's 1947 "South With Mawson" and Frank Hurley's 1948 "Shackleton's Argonauts" in one volume. Laseron's account of the 1912 Mawson expedition is full of human interest, and makes a useful adjunct to Mawson's own, somewhat drier account in "Home of the Blizzard." Frank Hurley's "Shackleton's Argonauts" is a gripping description of the Endurance expedition, also illustrated with some of Hurley's magnificent photographs. Having served with both Sir Douglas Mawson and Sir Ernest Shackleton, Hurley compares the two men in a couple of wonderful paragraphs, concluding "Shackleton grafted science onto exploration; Mawson added exploration onto science".

Ernest Shackleton Prints

The End
Dogs at rest beside the crushed and soon to be sunk Endurance.

 
"Endurance" Trapped and Slowly Crushed by Ice in Weddell Sea
 Photographic Print