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The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition was the last major expedition of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. Conceived by Sir Ernest Shackleton, its purpose was to achieve the first land crossing of the Antarctic continent. The expedition failed entirely to accomplish this aim, but it remains memorable as an epic of heroism and survival. It required two ships; the Endurance would take Shackleton’s party to the Weddell Sea, and the Aurora, under Captain Aeneas Mackintosh, would take the Ross Sea party to McMurdo Sound. In the event, Endurance became beset in the ice of the Weddell Sea before reaching Vahsel Bay. Despite efforts to free her, she drifted northward with the pack throughout the Antarctic winter of 1915. Eventually, she was crushed in the ice and sank, stranding her 28-man complement on the ice and subjecting them to a series of harrowing episodes—months spent in makeshift camps on the ice, a journey in lifeboats to Elephant Island, an 800-mile (1,300 km) open boat journey in the James Caird, and the first crossing of South Georgia—that led eventually to their rescue with not a life lost. Meanwhile, the Ross Sea party overcame great hardships to fulfil its mission, after Aurora was blown from her moorings during a gale and could not return. (Full article...)