Abstract

In 1914 Sir Ernest Shackleton embarked on what he called 'The last great polar journey' - the crossing of Antarctica. His expedition ended in disaster, with the Endurance crushed and three men dead. Forty years later Vivian Fuchs and Edmund Hillary, the hero of Everest, set out to succeed where Shackleton had failed. Despite the passage of four decades, the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1955-58 encountered many of the obstacles that had so hindered Shackleton - a chronic shortage of funds, inadequate equipment and an early onset of pack-ice. Even more disastrously, it also suffered from a clash of personalities so severe that it came close to destroying the expedition from within. Based upon interviews with the survivors and upon contemporary diaries and letters, Shackleton's Dream tells for the first time the epic story of this great but little known expedition.