Endurance by Alfred Lansing from 1959 is a compelling book on the twenty-eight man Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, led by Sir Ernest Shackleton. Much of the material was from diaries written during the trip as well as interviews Lansing did with some of the men and it's great detail on an incredible story.
The goal of the expedition was to cross the Antarctic continent from east to west and it set out for the Pole from South Georgia Island, east of the Falkland Islands off the coast of Argentina, on board the Endurance in December 1914. The ship roughly a month into the expedition was locked in by ice in the Weddell Sea just outside the Antarctic Circle. Shackleton hoped that the ship would eventually break free and the Endurance and its crew drifted with the ice floes frozen around it. However, the ice began to crush the ship and the men abandoned ship in October 1915.
The crew took what provisions they could from the ship along with three small boats and drifted on the ice until April 1916. The ice pack they were on then began to break apart and the crew was forced onto the three boats and after several perilous days at sea landed on Elephant Island in the northern tip of Antarctica.
Shackleton and several of his crew launched from Elephant Island April 24, 1916 for the 850-mile voyage back to South Georgia Island seeking rescue. The journey was exceedingly dangerous, both getting to the island and then safely landing on it, and they arrived on May 10, 522 days after leaving South Georgia. They then had to make a treacherous crossing over the top of the island, with Shackleton and two others walking into Stromness Whaling Station on May 21, 1916. The men there were familiar with the expedition and presumed all hands had been lost at sea, with it compelling reading in the book of Shackleton and his men walking from the center of South Georgia Island into the whaling encampment. The journey overland on South Georgia was the first recorded to have been done and Lansing notes that there wasn't another crossing of the island until almost 40 years later, and this done by expert climbers in proper gear.
Shackleton worked to secure a boat to return to Elephant Island to rescue the remaining crew and after several aborted attempts, picked them up on August 30, 1916. The book provides a great record of a remarkable battle to survive, with Shackleton and his men going from one almost impossible situation to another.
