These images were almost lost to icy waters—instead they made the Endurance crew legends

The images are well-known now. In one, ice blocks surround the famous three-masted ship, as grinning crew members and thick-furred dogs mill about a makeshift Antarctic camp. The scene belies the drama that went into saving the footage and photographs taken by Endurance photographer Frank Hurley. 

After the crippled vessel began to take on water, Hurley braved the flooding inner cabins to retrieve the negatives—glass plate, celluloid, and nitrate motion picture—which he had stored in a photography box that was itself stored within two tin boxes to protect from water. In the following months, the negatives traveled with the men across the ice and then over the sea to Elephant Island, where Hurley and the crew survived for four months before being rescued. 

(How our Explorers discovered the famous 'Endurance' over a century later.)

Today nearly 150 glass plates and 39 celluloid negatives are held by the Royal Geographic Society, in London. Jamie Owen, tasked with managing and preserving the organization’s extensive photographic collection, marvels at their condition. “If you leave out the preservation side of it, this almost perfect state they’re in at the moment is amazing, given the journey they’ve been on,” he says.

RGS has digitized the collection to ensure that the public can view the images. But the originals are untouched. In fact, short of the rare royal dignitary, National Geographic is the only institution to have been granted direct access to Hurley’s glass plates for the sake of this story and the documentary. 

(Shackleton’s legendary ship is finally found off the Antarctic Coast, a century later.)