As the timbers cracked and groaned, The Endurance staggered and listed dangerously to one side. Water flooded the ship's hold. The windows splintered and crashed. The Endurance was doomed.

Shackleton gave the fateful command: "Abandon ship!" Men and dogs streamed out onto the ice.

Shackleton insisted on taking only what was necessary. The men built structures they could live in out of wood salvaged from the doomed ship. On November 21, 1915, the men watched The Endurance crumble and sink beneath the ice.

The men fashioned a sloop—a tiny, reinforced boat—out of the wreckage of the ship and continued the journey. They rowed for seven days, after which the men's frozen hands had to be pried loose from the oars.

After surviving crushing ice floes, heaving seas, towering waves, gale-force winds, and even a hurricane, the men finally reached Elephant Island. But their trials were far from over. Cape Wild, and civilization, was on the other side of the island—and it was too far to walk.