Yet the joy at setting foot on Elephant Island was tempered by the grim fact that there was no chance of rescue. No ships passed that way. No radio at that time was capable of summoning help. They set up camp on the island; the next problem was to effect a rescue – ‘the thing to do was to take a boat to the nearest inhabited point’ …through the highest, broadest and longest swells in the world.

Shackleton chose the James Caird for the task as she was the largest and most seaworthy of the three boats and McNeish, the carpenter, set about converting her for the immense task ahead.

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This journey involved a crossing of the world’s most inhospitable ocean in the depths of Antarctic winter. The boat was buffeted by mountainous and tempestuous seas. Ice built up on the decking, fifteen inches (750mm) deep, threatening to overturn the James Caird. Hour by hour, frostbitten and numbed with cold, they had to chip away from the vessel. At other times they were forced to bale for dear life. Their only solace was four- hourly hot meals and the glimmer of a tiny primus stove. Their discomfort, hunched below in the James Caird’s cramped hold, must have been absolute.

But given Shackleton’s leadership, all six men’s sturdy seamanship and the amazing skills of New Zealander Frank Worsley, skipper of the Endurance, – they won through. Worsley succeeded in charting a route for the James Caird by direct reckoning with only four sightings of the sun to observe their position (26 April and 3,4 and 7 May); the rest was dead reckoning (‘guesswork’). After 16 terrible days at sea, the James Caird sighted land at midday on Monday 8 May 1916.

Even now they had completed 800 miles their task was by no means over. The boat arrived off South Georgia in hurricane conditions, and only at 5 pm on Wednesday 10 May did they eventually manage to land, after tacking violently to make their way into a small, inaccessible inlet. Had they failed to make it, or had they overshot the island, Shackleton, his crew and the James Caird would have been either smashed to pieces or swept beyond South Georgia, to be lost in mid-Atlantic.

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They then spent five days building up strength for the next leg of their journey, which involved relaunching the Caird and steering her round a high bluff and then on to a low beach of sand and pebbles where they converted the boat into a ‘very comfortable cabin.’ The James Caird was now unable to sail any further and the only alternative was to cross South Georgia’s mountainous interior. Shackleton chose Worsley and Crean to accompany him and they set off with three days provisions in the form of ‘sledging ration and biscuit’, plus the log of Endurance.

They traversed two snowfields, four glaciers and three mountain ranges, covering 40 miles in 36 hours and arriving in Stromness in the early hours of 20 May.

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That boat journey aboard the James Caird was a supreme act of human courage. Not a single man of Shackleton‘s original 28 men was lost. And though Endurance was lost, the James Caird survives to this day as a living reminder of an act of remarkable courage in the heroic age of exploration.

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The Caird was subsequently (in 1967) loaned to the national Maritime Museum in Greenwich where she remained until 1986, when she was returned with some ceremony to Dulwich College. In 1989 she was installed in the North Cloister in Dulwich College and in 1994 was loaned to the International Boat Show in earls Court London, where she attracted a great deal of interest.

Apart from occasional outings to maritime exhibitions and displays, the Caird remained on permanent display in the North Cloister at Dulwich College until 2015. In that year the College completed its new science block, known as The Laboratory. The boat brings an incredible resonance to The Laboratory, sitting in its own James Caird Hall. The design of the building and placement of the boat mean that she can now be seen from every angle at ground level and for the first time from above, allowing every visitor to reflect on, and be inspired by, the achievement of Shackleton and his crew.

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