Endurance at Night
Short Sleeve T-SHIRT
Sizes: S, M, L, XL, XXL
SHIRT COLOUR: Black
Price: $19.95 US
FRONT: Endurance at Night
PHOTOGRAPH BY: FRANK HURLEY
BACK: “For scientific discovery, give me Scott; FOR SPEED AND EFFICIENCY OF TRAVEL, GIVE ME AMUNDSEN; But when disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton”
Our t-shirts are made from 100% pre-shrunk cotton with colour-fast dyes and are unisex fit with generous size dimensions. The same care and attention to detail we put into our posters we apply to the creation of our clothing.
The image of the ship Endurance held fast in the ice of the Weddell Sea is one of the most famous and enduring of the photographs to come out of Shackleton’s expedition. In his diary entry for August 27, 1915, photographer Frank Hurley wrote:
“During the night take flashlight of ship beset by pressure. This necessitated some 20 flashes, one behind each salient pressure hummock, no less than 10 flashes being required to satisfactorily illuminate the ship itself. Half blinded after the successive flashes, I lost my bearings amidst the hummocks, bumping my shins against projecting ice points and stumbling into deep snow drifts.”
The Endurance was beset in the ice of the Weddell Sea in mid January, 1915. The men of the Imperial-Trans Antarctic Expedition over-wintered on board the beloved vessel (when this photograph was taken), until the austral spring, when she was crushed by the pack ice on October 27th, and then sank on November 21.
The men were forced to abandon ship and take refuge on the ice. All hope of completing the trans-Antarctic crossing were finally and completely shattered. Shackleton gathered his men around and, without emotion or melodrama, said, “...(the) ship and stores have gone – so now we’ll go home.” (From A. Macklin’s diary).
On the back of this shirt is a quote reprinted many times, to the point of being unattributed. Our research tells us that the original concept embodied in the quote comes from Apsley Cherry-Gerrard’s polar classic, “The Worst Journey in The World” and was subsequently paraphrased by Sir Edmund Hillary.
