Stranded on Elephant Island April 1916

You are advising Sir Ernest Shackleton, leader of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition.

Months after their ship Endurance was crushed by pack ice and abandoned, all 28 men have reached Elephant Island in three small open boats. The island is uninhabited and far from shipping routes, and no one in the outside world knows where they are.

Known information

The men are exhausted after months living on drifting sea ice; food on the island will come mainly from seals and penguins.
The nearest inhabited place they can realistically reach is the whaling stations of South Georgia, about 800 miles (1,300 km) away across the Southern Ocean.
Closer islands lie in the direction of the prevailing westerly winds and currents, making them very hard to reach in small boats.
The best boat, the James Caird, is only about 7 metres (23 feet) long.
The southern winter is approaching, bringing storms and sea ice.

Reveal what happened (spoilers: decide first)

Fact

What actually happened

Shackleton sailed for South Georgia with five companions. (Sail for help)

On 24 April 1916 Shackleton and five men left Elephant Island in the James Caird. After about 16 days at sea they reached South Georgia on 10 May, and Shackleton, Frank Worsley and Tom Crean then crossed the island’s mountains to reach the whaling station at Stromness. After several failed attempts, Shackleton rescued the 22 men left on Elephant Island on 30 August 1916 aboard the Chilean tug Yelcho. All of them survived.

Important

Possible consequences · Analysis and speculation, not fact

With no one searching in the right area, many polar historians doubt the whole party could have survived an Antarctic winter and been found by chance. That judgement remains an assessment rather than a certainty.

History does not reveal what would definitely have happened under the other choice. Many factors could have changed the outcome.

Context · Why it was decided this way

Worsley navigated with only a handful of sun sightings during the voyage, and the crossing of South Georgia’s uncharted interior had not been done before. The men on Elephant Island, led by Frank Wild, survived more than four months under upturned boats.

The expedition’s separate Ross Sea party, which laid supply depots on the other side of Antarctica, was not so fortunate: three of its members died.