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