James Caird (Lifeboat for the Endurance)

The voyage of the James Caird was an open boat journey from Elephant Island in the South Shetland Islands to South Georgia in the southern Atlantic Ocean, a distance of 800 nautical miles (1,500 km; 920 mi).   Sir Ernest Shackleton and five companions, needed to obtain rescue for the main body of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914–17, which was trapped on Elephant Island after the loss of Endurance. History has come to consider the James Caird's voyage as one of the greatest small-boat journeys ever accomplished.

In October 1915 the Endurance had been crushed and sunk by pack ice in the Weddell Sea, leaving Shackleton and the crew stranded on an unreliable ice surface thousands of miles from safety. During the following months the party drifted northward until April 1916, when the floe on which they were camped broke up. They then made their way in lifeboats to the remote and inaccessible Elephant Island, where Shackleton quickly decided that the most effective means of obtaining relief for his beleaguered party would be to sail one of the lifeboats to South Georgia.

Of the three lifeboats, the James Caird was deemed the strongest and most likely to survive the journey, (named by Shackleton after Sir James Key Caird, a Dundee jute manufacturer and philanthropist, whose sponsorship had helped fund Shackleton's expedition).  Before it's voyage the boat was strengthened and adapted by ship's carpenter Harry McNish, to withstand the mighty seas of the Southern Ocean.

James Caird launching from Elephant Island (photo probably taken by Frank Hurley)

After surviving a series of dangers, including a near capsize, the boat reached South Georgia after 16 days. The crew overcame a final peril in securing a safe landing on the exposed coast.  Shackleton was then able to organise the relief of the Elephant Island party, and to return his men home without loss of life. After the end of the First World War the James Caird was brought back from South Georgia to England, and is now on permanent display at Shackleton's old school, Dulwich College.