Voyage of the James Caird

The voyage of the James Caird was a small-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). Undertaken by Sir Ernest Shackleton and five companions, it aimed to obtain rescue for the main body of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914–17, stranded on Elephant Island after the loss of its ship Endurance. Polar historians regard the voyage as one of the greatest small-boat journeys ever undertaken.

In October 1915 pack ice in the Weddell Sea had sunk Endurance, leaving Shackleton and his companions adrift on a precarious ice surface. Throughout the duration of their survival, the group drifted northward until April 1916, when the floe on which they had encamped broke up. They then made their way in the ship's lifeboats to Elephant Island, where Shackleton decided that the most effective means of obtaining rescue 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. Shackleton had named it after Sir James Key Caird, a Dundee jute-manufacturer and philanthropist, whose sponsorship had helped finance the expedition. Before its voyage, the ship's carpenter Harry McNish strengthened and adapted the boat to withstand the mighty seas of the Southern Ocean. Surviving a series of dangers, including a near capsizing, the boat reached the southern coast of South Georgia after a voyage lasting 16 days. Shackleton and two companions then crossed the island's mountainous interior to reach a whaling station on the northern side. Here he organised the relief of the Elephant Island party, and the return of his men home without loss of life. After the end of the First World War in 1918, the James Caird was brought back from South Georgia to England in 1919 and put on permanent display at Shackleton's old school, Dulwich College from 1922.

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