Positive Quiddity: Courageous Seamanship

The voyage of the James Caird was a small-boat journey from Elephant Island in the South Shetland Islands to South Gerorgia in the southern Atlantic Ocean, a distance of 800 nautical miles (1,500 km; 920 mi). Undertaken by Sir Ernest Shackleton and five companions, its objective was to obtain rescue for the main body of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition0 of 1914–17, stranded on Elephant Island after the loss of its ship Endurance. Polar historians regard the James Caird's voyage as one of the greatest small-boat journeys ever undertaken.

In October 1915, the expedition's ship, the Endurance, had been crushed and sunk by pack ice in the Weddell Sea, leaving Shackleton and the crew adrift on an unreliable ice surface thousands of miles from safety. During the following months, the party drifted northward on the ice until April 1916, when the floe on which they were camped broke up. They then made their way in the ship's lifeboats to the remote and inaccessible Elephant Island, where Shackleton quickly decided that the most effective means of obtaining rescue would be to sail one of the lifeboats to South Georgia.

Of the three lifeboats, the James Caird was deemed the strongest and most likely to survive the journey. It had been named by Shackleton after Sir James Key Caird, a Dundee jute manufacturer and philanthropist, whose sponsorship had helped finance the expedition. Before its voyage, the boat was strengthened and adapted by ship's carpenter,  Harry McNish, to withstand the mighty seas of the Southern Ocean. Surviving a series of dangers, including a near capsizing, the boat reached the southern coast of South Georgia after a voyage lasting 16 days. Shackleton and two companions then crossed the island's mountainous interior to reach a whaling station on the northern side. Here he was able to organise the relief of the Elephant Island party, and to return his men home without loss of life. After the end of the First World War, the James Caird was brought back from South Georgia to England, and is now on permanent display at Shackleton's old school, Dulwich College.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_of_the_James_Caird