MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

In Shackleton's Footsteps

An attempt to re-trace the perilous journey by Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton across South Georgia's formidable mountains, from King Haakon Bay to Stromness, is being made during March by a six member team of British adventurers.

They are also sailing a replica of Shackleton's famous boat, the 23-feet-long (seven-metre) James Caird, in the stormy waters of the Southern Ocean where Shackleton achieved one of the most incredible feats of survival, rescue and leadership of all time between 1915 and 1917. After his ship, Endurance, was crushed by ice and sank, his eighteen-month rescue bid involved an 800-mile (1,280-kilometre) tempestuous sea crossing from Elephant Island to South Georgia, a trek across South Georgia's unmapped mountains, and repeated attempts, in four different ships, to rescue alive all 28 men on the expedition.

Shackleton's climb across South Georgia, never before attempted, took him and his two companions across a wilderness of ice-bound peaks, glaciers and snowfields. In threadbare clothing, without proper climbing boots, they covered the forty miles (64 kilometres) in 36 hours without sleep. Shackleton later wrote: "Providence guided us ... During that long march... it often seemed that we were four, not three".

That epic feat has inspired the 2001 Shackleton Memorial Expedition which is raising money for two charities, the Shackleton Scholarship Fund and the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust. Its leader, 36-year-old Neil Laughton, a former Royal Marine now taking leave from his London office business, is no stranger to adventure nor daunting mountains. He has already climbed the highest mountain on each of the seven continents, including Everest, walked to the North Pole, and was the first person to circumnavigate Great Britain on a jet ski.

Standing beside Shackleton's famous boat, James Caird, now kept at Dulwich College in South London, Neil Laughton told Mercopress: "Shackleton was a hero of mine. I disappear at least once a year on an expedition to alleviate the boredom of office work. Will we make it? We are in the lap of the Gods -- and at the mercy of the weather. But I have inherent optimism. I don't fail".

Several thousand pounds has been spent refurbishing the James Caird replica boat, appropriately called "The Sir Ernest Shackleton", which successfully replicated Shackleton's epic 800-mile boat journey in 1994,.That expedition was led by Trevor Potts, who is technical adviser to the curr