When Sir Ernest Shackleton and his crew of 27 men headed their stout wooden ship Endurance into Antarctica’s Weddell Sea in December 1914, they had high hopes but few illusions about the “evil conditions” they were up against: subzero temperatures, hurricane-force winds, uncharted waters and lands. Above all, they faced “a gigantic and interminable jigsaw puzzle devised by nature”—pack ice.
Today, ships in this region are reinforced steel, satellites provide data to create accurate ice maps, sophisticated programs can pinpoint drift within the pack and communications can even work via smartphone on WhatsApp. But none of this
