27th July 1915





The end came at last;she was in grave danger. Nothing that was anything like her would survive the strain. I ordered all hands onto the floe immediately. The ship had come to a stop in the slippery ice. We began looking for a place to stay for the night. The wind was howling, snow was coming. Once we had found a place, we moved our gear in the sub-zero weather. We moved our piles of stuff: our bags, our clothes, our blankets etc. We were all shivering (even though we had blankets) but we knew we must continue.

28th July 1915

The Endurance was almost gone. One man's finger fell of due to frostbite. We wished we were allowed to fight in the was. It would be so much better. I could've been serving the country but instead, 27 men were about to die to frostbite. Frostbite was like a murderer murdering anyone it saw. We had to finish moving the gear before it got dark. The night was always a nightmare in the freezing weather of the Antarctic. We ended up building a camp next to the new place so that we had more space. I looked at Endurance sadly and hoped we wouldn't join her in the ice.

29th July 1915

Endurance finally sank and we were all extremely disappointed. Even though it was the summer, it was freezing cold to the point we could not move in the South Pole. Were we all going to die? Had our journey come to an end? Those were the questions that I kept on asking myself. I was in charge of 27 men and I had let them all down. Their families will be waiting for them excitedly when the was finally finishes. They won't know that we have died and they won't get to celebrate the end of the war with their family. Instead they will be stuck mourning for loved ones. "Is this really how it ends?" I whispered whilst looking up to the cloudless, empty, snowy sky.

-Ernest Shackleton