2024-09, Viv James, In the Footsteps of Shackleton

Viv James, will present a slide show and talk under the title In the Footsteps of Shackleton.

Viv James’s father was Reginald W James, erstwhile Professor of Physics at UCT, after whom the RW James Building is named.  In 1914, fresh out of Physics at Cambridge, RW James joined Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Imperial TransAntarctic Expedition as Physicist. Their ship, the Endurance, became trapped by the ice in the Weddell Sea for nine months, as shown in the well-known photo to the right. 

As summer approached, she was crushed by the shifting pack ice and sank. Shackleton’s party of 28 men lived in tents on the ice for six months, until the breaking up of the ice allowed them to launch their 20-foot lifeboats. Six gruelling days later they reached Elephant Island. Famously, Shackleton and five companions then set off in a lifeboat and sailed to South Georgia, some 1,200 km away, for help. Five months later, the 22 men who had remained on Elephant Island, including RW James, were rescued.

Some sixteen years ago, Viv James sailed from the Falkland Islands as a guest of the Royal Navy aboard the ice-patrol ship, HMS Endurance to the Antarctic and visited Elephant Island. Viv will talk about Shackleton’s ill-fated voyage, with references to his father’s notes, diaries and photographs, combined with some of his own photographs of his own visit to Elephant Island.