Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition Escape Room

The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914-1917)

Follow the Adélie penguin to begin your journey!

The year is 1914. The Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration is coming to a close. The North and South Poles have both been conquered. Only one task remains: to be the first to make an overland crossing of the Antarctic continent. Sir Ernest Shackleton is determined to lead an expedition to do just that. With promises of a hazardous journey, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, and a safe return doubtful, Shackleton is looking for volunteers to join him. Will you take up this challenge to help him successfully cross Antarctica using your knowlege of force and motion? Climb aboard the ship Endurance and prepare to set sail. Adventure - and danger - await!

As a crew, we left the island of South Georgia, headed for the continent of Antarctica, on December 5, 1914. Two days later, the Endurance entered pack ice—the barrier of thick sea ice which surrounds the continent. For several weeks, the ship carefully made its way through leads in the ice; but on January 18, gale winds pushed the ice floes tight against each other. Suddenly, there was no way forward, nor any way back. The Endurance was trapped!

In private, Sir Ernest Shackleton was overheard expressing to the ship’s captain: “The ship can’t live in this… it may be only a question of a few months, weeks or even days… but what the ice gets, the ice keeps.” It is now October 1915. The Endurance has been held in the ice for over 10 months. The pressure from the floes and ice ridges has finally cracked the stern of the ship and pushed her over on her side. We are forced to abandon her and establish a camp on the ice.

The plan now is to march across the ice towards land. The ship’s three lifeboats will need to be taken, along with necessary supplies. The ice is rough and the floes are constantly tilting and changing. One of the crew members has described it as "a labyrinth of hummocks and ridges".

Scenario: After the Endurance is abandoned, the crew must pull sledges over the ice. Challenge: Show a diagram of sledging conditions with adjustable weights or friction levels. Teachers must determine the optimal force and direction for sledging. Cause and Effect: Demonstrate how friction between ice and sled can change based on force and weight, affecting movement.

In three days, we have managed to travel barely two miles. It is now November 1, and Sir Ernest Shackleton has given orders to abandon the march. He has chosen a flat and solid-looking floe on which we will make camp and await the break-up of the ice.

Five months later, Shackleton wrote in his diary: “The floe has been a good friend to us, but it is reaching the end of its journey and is liable at any time now to break up.” On April 9, 1916, it did just that, splitting beneath us with an almighty crack. The order has been given to break camp and launch the lifeboats. We now have a new foe to contend with - the open sea.

We have been six days at sea. We have had freezing spray thrown in our faces and frigid water tossed over us. Our small boats have been batted from side to side and most of us are suffering with seasickness and dysentery. Yet, land has been sighted! We rowed with all the strength we had. On April 15, we stepped ashore on the rocky uninhabited Elephant Island. It was the first time we had been on land since leaving South Georgia 497 days previously. The idea of an overland crossing of Antarctica had been completely abandoned. Now there was only one goal- survival.

After much discussion, the decision has been made for Sir Ernest Shackleton and five crew members to set out in their most seaworthy boat, the James Caird, and sail back to a whaling station on the island of South Georgia. They would need to travel more than 800 miles across the stormiest ocean on the globe. The rest of the men would remain on Elephant Island, awaiting their return. This was their only hope of being rescued. No one else in the world knew where they were. Shackleton and his 5-man crew waved good-bye to their friends on the morning of April 24, 1916. If ever there was a “mission: impossible”, this was it.

For 16 days, Shackleton and his crew battled monstrous swells and hurricane-force winds, baling water out of the boat and beating ice off the sails. Finally, they reached South Georgia island. The wind eased off and they made it ashore. Yet this was not the end. The storms had pushed their boat off course, and they had landed on the opposite side of the island from where the whaling station stood. After a few days rest, Shackleton and two of his crew members set off on foot across the island's unexplored and largely unknown frozen interior to get help.

On May 20, 1916, after 36 hours of desperate hiking without a map- climbing over mountains and sliding down glaciers, the three men staggered into the whaling station. They were taken to the station manager. “Who are you?” the manager asked the group. “My name is Shackleton,” one of the men quietly answered. Sir Ernest Shackleton made three unsuccessful attempts to get a ship back through the ice to Elephant Island. But he refused to give up trying.

10

Congratulations! You have reached the end of your journey.

On August 30, 1916, the men left on Elephant Island were just sitting down to a lunch of boiled seal’s backbone when their lookout came racing in. He had spotted a ship heading in their direction. All the men moved as quickly as they could to the shore. As they watched, a smaller boat was lowered over the side of the ship. It held a figure familiar to them all. It had been four long months since Sir Ernest Shackleton had left most of his crew on this island. He counted the men standing on the shore. All 22 that he had left behind were there! Twenty months after setting out for the Antarctic, every one of the Endurance crew was alive and safe.