The Endurance was supposed to carry Ernest Shackleton and his men toward one of the last great prizes of exploration. Instead, the ship became imprisoned in Antarctic pack ice, drifted helplessly for months, and was finally crushed by the frozen sea. Captain Frank Arthur Worsley witnessed the disaster from the deck of the Endurance and then shared every stage of the crew's astonishing fight for survival. The men lived on drifting ice, launched their small boats into some of the most dangerous waters on Earth, and eventually reached the bleak refuge of Elephant Island. Their only hope lay in an almost unimaginable voyage across the Southern Ocean in the twenty-two-foot James Caird.

Worsley's navigation during that journey became legendary. With storms obscuring the sky and only fleeting opportunities to take observations, he guided Shackleton and their companions across hundreds of miles of open ocean to South Georgia. Endurance is his firsthand account of disaster, leadership, courage, seamanship, and one of the most extraordinary rescues in the history of exploration.