Shackleton crew’s seat of Endurance

AS the crew of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s doomed ship Endurance awaited rescue in Antarctica, they had plenty to worry about.

But the simple act of changing underpants still brought ‘great joy’ to Sir James Wordie – a geologist among the group.

Author Joanna Grochowicz told the history festival yesterday: ‘He kept extensive diaries... [in] one whole entry for a day he wrote about how wonderful it was to change his underwear. He didn’t change them for a new pair, he turned them inside out. This was a great joy because he hadn’t turned them round for five months. He writes quite beautifully about how good that felt to have soft fabric against his skin after months of not washing.

Miss Grochowicz, author of the book Shackleton’s Endurance, added: ‘You can imagine what the smell of these men must have been like.’ Endurance sank in November 1915. Shackleton and his men escaped in a lifeboat, but were not rescued until the following August.