Elephant Island

As we left the Antarctic continent, the next destination was to be Elephant Island before heading for South Georgia. As you can see the weather turned on us, the seas rose, but I didn't get seasick. We were to make a zodiac run into Cape Wild but due to the seas and surf, it was abandoned. Cape Wild is where Shackleton and crew first made landfall from the British Imperial Trans-Antarctica Expedition of 1914-1916 after spending 16 months trapped aboard the ENDURANCE and living on ice floes since early 1915. Point Wild was were Shackleton and 5 others launched the longboat James Caird in an attempt to reach South Georgia and the whaling station there in order to rescue the remaining 22 men. Their epic journey of 800 miles to South Georgia on the southern seas is one of the most incredible journeys ever taken. Being off by even 1 degree (and star sitings were extremely rare as the weather was similar to those in my pictures) would mean missing South Georgia, and next piece of land would have been Africa - of course they would have been dead by then, and so would the 22 men at Cape Wild, Elephant Island.