Documentary team to retrace Shackleton’s gruelling South Georgia trek

A team of history documentary-makers are preparing for an ambitious bid to retrace the steps of polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton’s most gruelling journey.

The team, including TV historian Dan Snow, will attempt to traverse the island of South Georgia, which the famous adventurer was forced to trek across in his desperate bid to seek rescue in 1916.

Shackleton, one of Britain’s most renowned explorers, lost his ship the Endurance after it was crushed by ice in 1915 during the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition.

He took his crew on two lifeboats to the remote Elephant Island, and from there took five of them on an 800-mile journey to South Georgia, across the Southern Ocean, to seek help at a whalers’ station at Stromness.

Preet Chandi

He left 22 colleagues behind, but thanks to his successful journey across the freezing, treacherous landscape of South Georgia he was able to reach a whaling station in Stromness and raise the alarm.

A team of eight, including Mr Snow, South Pole explorer Preet Chandi and Dr John Shears, are now preparing to recreate Shackleton’s trek across the island.

Dr Shears led the 2022 expedition that located the wreck of Shackleton’s ship, the Endurance.

Speaking to the Press Association from Montevideo in Uruguay as he prepared for the journey, Mr Snow said Shackleton’s daring escape had been “the single greatest self-rescue, the single greatest escape in recorded history – there’s nothing else like it”.

The historian said: “He’s leading the most remote group of human beings on the planet at the time.”

Mr Snow stressed that his own adventure, which has the benefit of modern technology, will be nothing like as difficult as Shackleton’s.

“To walk in those footsteps, as Shackleton makes one of the greatest journeys of history, is something that I never imagined I’d be doing,” he said.

“It’s just the most exciting and the most extraordinary privilege”.

The team will nevertheless face a challenging task to navigate a route across the island to the whaling station of Stromness, retracing the 1916 route as much as possible.

South Georgia has a mountainous, isolated landscape which the team will need to find a way to traverse.

Climate change has meant that glaciers have retreated since Shackleton’s time more than a century ago, meaning their route cannot be exactly the same.

South Georgia has a mountainous, isolated landscape (Alamy/PA)

They will attempt to land on South Georgia via a Rib (rigid inflatable boat) launched from a cruise ship.

Shackleton and two of his colleagues were forced to slide down a mountainside during their arduous crossing of the island, something which may simply be too dangerous for the History Hit documentary crew to attempt.

“This is still one of the most remote and unspoiled places on Earth,” Mr Snow said.

“It’s got the history, it’s got the contemporary geography, I can’t think of anything better to be doing.”

The documentary is in partnership with the Dundee-based charity South Georgia Heritage Trust.