Shackleton decided his best bet was to take a few of his best men and sail to South Georgia, 800 miles away. Twenty-two men would have to stay behind on Elephant Island and wait to be rescued.
On their fourteenth day at sea, the men finally set foot on solid ground. They'd made it to South Georgia, but they still had to cross to the other side to get to the island's whaling station. With nothing but an adz and some rope, Shackleton and his team trekked across the island's unknown interior. Shackleton urged them forward: he would not let the men stop to rest, or even sleep. They were in a race for their companions' lives.
After 36 hours of marching, they reached civilization. At the station manager's house, they were treated like men returning from the dead. But what about the men stranded on Elephant Island? Were they even alive? They would have been marooned on the edge of Antarctica for more than a year. Shackleton could not rest until he'd found them.
On August 30, 1916, Shackleton returned to Elephant Island. As he neared the shore, he saw men pouring out of the huts. Shackleton called out, "How many are you?" and received the reply, "All here, Skipper!" Not one life had been lost; miraculously, every crew member had survived. One of the greatest boat journeys in modern maritime history had come to an end.
Why We Explore
About 25,000 years ago, humans traveled on foot from Asia to Alaska. These wandering nomads crossed a 1,000-mile-wide land bridge that spanned the Bering Sea. They had no idea where they were going. They had no idea what they would find when they got there. The urge to explore is so strong it sometimes outweighs the instinct for survival.
The 15th century is called the Age of Exploration. Spain, England, and France were the superpowers of the day. Each wanted to expand its empire. It was common for kings and queens to sponsor expeditions to the East. The explorers, if successful, would claim new trading partners and find new water routes. But many were not successful. These expeditions were fraught with risk. Many explorers and their crews lost their lives in the line of duty.
Some early explorers, however, were motivated by greed. The Spanish Conquistadores tore through the Americas in search of gold and silver. Another Spaniard, Ponce de Leon, spent years looking for (but never finding) the famed "Fountain of Youth."
History provides us with many examples of explorers who wanted to be "first." In 1927, the American aviator and explorer Charles Lindbergh made the first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean. Other pilots had crossed the Atlantic before him, but he was the first to do it alone, nonstop.
In 1928, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Sadly, her plane disappeared in 1938 during an attempt to fly around the world.
The aerospace engineer Burt Rutan built SpaceShipOne, the first suborbital spacecraft. He didn't do this in order to win the prestigious Ansari X-Prize in 2004. The prize money was actually less than the money he spent building it. More important was the exploration itself, and the thrill of discovery.
But now that we're well into the 21st century, what's left to discover? We live in a world where not only can we pinpoint a location instantly on a smart phone, but we can call up an image of it. We have explored almost every nook and cranny of the planet. But there are still vast areas of Earth no one's ever seen. They just happen to be underwater.
The fact is, only 28 percent of Earth’s surface is above the ocean. The rest is below. The greatest mountain ranges on the planet lie beneath the sea. Since most of that is in eternal darkness, it has been largely unexplored.
But in recent years there has been an explosion of technology that will accelerate the pace of underwater exploration. Today we have pre-programmed robots that can comb the ocean's depths, like underwater hunting dogs, and report their findings. There are amazing high-bandwidth satellite links that move the command-and-control center to the ocean floor. This makes it possible to track what's going on 36,000 feet under the sea on a smart phone in real time.
So whether we’re talking about the trailblazing expeditions of Lewis and Clark, the deep sea voyages of Jacques-Yves Cousteau, the first moon landing, or an afternoon spent digging in our own backyards, humans are always pushing the boundaries. The urge to explore is part of what it means to be human. It’s what has allowed us to survive as a species.
