Ernest Shackleton and the Endurance: a historical documentary in German about a failed Antarctic expedition and the rescue of 28 men. When the pack ice destroyed his ship, Shackleton had to turn his plan to cross Antarctica into a way home.

This comprehensive biography follows the polar explorer from the Nimrod expedition to the voyage of the James Caird, the crossing of South Georgia, and the rescue on Elephant Island. The focus is on concrete decisions: to turn back or continue, to march or to wait, to stay together or to split the crew.

The story also includes Frank Worsley, Frank Wild, Harry McNish, the doctors and sailors, as well as Captain Luis Pardo and the Chilean Yelcho. And it has a lesser-known second side: In the Ross Sea party of the same expedition, Arnold Spencer-Smith, Aeneas Mackintosh, and Victor Hayward perished. All 28 men of the Endurance survived—not all participants in the entire expedition.

A narrated historical documentary with archival footage, illustrations, and diagrams about polar exploration, responsibility, and survival in the ice.

CHAPTERS
00:00 The Ship Is Lost
08:03 How Close Can a Destination Be?

16:56 Two Ships, One Risky Plan
25:17 One Ship Becomes Winter Quarters
34:10 March or Wait
42:45 Three Boats and No Safe Harbor
51:30 Six Men on the James Caird
1:00:45 Over the Mountains to Help
1:09:46 The Men Who Had to Wait
1:19:30 The Other Half of the Expedition

SOURCES (SELECTION)
Ernest Shackleton: South. The Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition 1914–1917 (1919)
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5199
Ernest Shackleton: Shackleton in the Antarctic (1911), based on The Heart of the Antarctic (1909)
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/69138
Royal Museums Greenwich: History of Antarctic explorers
https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/maritim...
NZ History: Endurance expedition parties
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/inter...
Natural History Museum: Shackleton's final expedition
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/shackl...

PICTURES AND REPRESENTATION
70 historical Photographs, maps, and book illustrations from the aforementioned publications of 1911 and 1919, digitized by Project Gutenberg; plus 20 AI-generated illustrative scenes and 10 original diagrams. The generated scenes are not original photographs and are not exact reconstructions of individual people, places, or conversations. The narration is synthetically produced. German subtitles are available separately.

Life's Work Archive – Biographies in Historical Context.