On October 27, 1915, Ernest Shackleton gave the order to abandon ship. He was stranded on the ice of Antarctica's Weddell Sea, with 27 men, and nobody in the world knew where they were. His ship, Endurance, had been trapped in pack ice for months. Now the ice was crushing her. The men climbed down onto the frozen sea with lifeboats, tents and whatever food they could carry. A few weeks later, on November 21, Endurance slipped beneath the ice. They camped on drifting floes for months. When the ice finally broke up, they rowed three small boats to Elephant Island, a bare rock nobody would ever search. So Shackleton went for help himself. He and five men sailed a 22-foot lifeboat, the James Caird, about 800 miles across the Southern Ocean, one of the roughest seas on Earth, to South Georgia island. They landed on the wrong side. So they hiked across the island's unmapped mountains and glaciers to reach a whaling station. It took four attempts to get back through the ice to Elephant Island. On August 30, 1916, a ship finally reached them. Every single man was alive. In March 2022, explorers found Endurance about 3,000 meters down in the Weddell Sea, upright and so well preserved you can still read her name on the stern. He lost the ship, the mission and the expedition. He didn't lose one man. Disclaimer: Distances are approximate (the James Caird voyage is usually given as about 800 miles, roughly 1,300 km), and the wreck depth is given as about 3,008 meters. "Every single man was alive" refers to the 28-man Endurance party; three men from the expedition's separate Ross Sea party died on the other side of Antarctica. Photos: Frank Hurley (public domain), via Wikimedia Commons / State Library of New South Wales