100 years ago today...

100 years ago today, Shackleton gave the order for men and dogs to abandon the Endurance as the ice took it's destructive toll on her:

"....at 5 p.m. I ordered all hands on to the ice. The twisting, grinding floes were working their will at last on the ship. It was a sickening sensation to feel the decks breaking up under one’s feet, the great beams bending and then snapping with a noise like heavy gunfire......I cannot describe the impression of relentless destruction that was forced upon me as I looked down and around. The floes, with the force of millions of tons of moving ice behind them, were simply annihilating the ship." 

Despite this, it would be almost another month before she finally slipped beneath the ice, and yet longer before the men were rescued.

Photo via Shackleton Exhibition.