Voyage of the James Caird

The James Caird was one of the three tenders of Endurance, the ship expedition of Ernest Shackleton during his Endurance Expedition ( 1914-1917 ). Originally built as a whaling boat it was on the name of the main sponsors of the expedition, the Scottish entrepreneur James Key Caird (1837-1916), renamed. With the James Caird, Shackleton, Frank Worsley and four other members of the expedition took the daring rescue journey from Elephant Iceland to South Georgia.

The James Caird was a robust, zweimastiges boat with a length of 7.50 meters and a width of two meters. Fully loaded this boat had only a freeboard of 60 cm. The drive belt served four and a sail from mizzen, wholesale and foresail.

When the Endurance was crushed in the fall of 1915 by the ice of the Weddell Sea, the crew rescued three lifeboats on the pack ice, with whom she drifted over long months to the northwest. On April 15, 1916 she landed after a five-day trip through the drifting pack ice floes with these three boats to Elephant Iceland. Since the chances of a random rescue were very low, Shackleton decided together with the captain of the Endurance, Frank Worsley, and four other people in the strongest of their tenders, the James Caird to sail, after 800 nautical miles (about 1500 km ) distant South Georgia. This trip, and in particular the successful navigation by Worsley, despite unfavorable conditions is considered one of the greatest seafaring achievements of the 20th century.

The James Caird has been preserved to this day. It is owned by the Dulwich College in London, where the young Ernest Shackleton has been informed. The boat is open to the public and can be visited in college, when it is not on otherwise exhibitions.

In 2000 Arved Fuchs undertook a detailed replica of Shackleton's lifeboat, the James Caird II, its expedition " Shackleton in 2000 ," during which he nachvollzog the journey of Shackleton. The ship is now in the International Maritime Museum Hamburg and can be visited there.