Frank Worsley

Who is Frank Worsley?

Frank Arthur Worsley was a New Zealand-born master mariner who captained the Endurance during Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914-1917. After the ship was crushed by pack ice and the crew reached Elephant Island, Worsley served as navigator aboard the small lifeboat James Caird on its roughly 800-nautical-mile crossing of the Southern Ocean to South Georgia, taking sun sightings on only four occasions in seventeen days amid mountainous seas and using dead reckoning the rest of the time — a feat still regarded as one of the greatest navigational achievements in maritime history. After the James Caird landed at King Haakon Bay, Worsley was one of the three men, alongside Shackleton and Tom Crean, who made the first crossing of South Georgia's uncharted interior mountains and glaciers on foot to reach the whaling station at Stromness and summon help for the rest of the expedition. He later wrote two firsthand accounts of these events, Endurance: An Epic of Polar Adventure (1931) and Shackleton's Boat Journey (1933), which remain primary historical sources for the crossing. Worsley went on to serve in both World Wars and continued a career connected to exploration and the Royal Navy until his death in 1943.

Sources: Frank Worsley, Shackleton's Boat Journey (Philip Allan, 1933) · Frank Worsley, Endurance: An Epic of Polar Adventure (1931) · Ernest Shackleton, South: The Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition, 1914-1917 (1919), Chapter X