In this episode, we deviated from the normal practice of telling events as they occurred. We tried to imagine how anyone could write anything during an icy, tumultuous, life-threatening, water-logged boat voyage. It just didn’t make sense. So we dated everything retrospectively. Our favourite fun fact (without a doubt!) is on page 34, where Holness falls through the ice into the water while in his sleeping bag. This moment reveals the incredible dangers of their escape as well as the vigil and courage of Shackleton to heave Holness out of the water. Other than the small graphic of the burnt match on page 38, these journal pages are 100% accurate to the best of our knowledge.

For six days and five nights, the crew’s world was incredibly small. It consisted of their 20-ish-foot lifeboat, and the other 8-10 men on board. We tried to imagine what else - besides the oars with which they rowed for dear life - was critical to them during this time.

As far as we know, there is no indication that a primus stove needed a plate to rest upon. However, for our puzzle, a plate with some precautionary words was quite helpful!

There were two surgeons on the expedition: Macklin and McIlroy. They were the ones that eventually amputated Blackboro’s frostbitten toes. Lansing describes them using “surgical gauze” and a few “surgical instruments” so we figured “surgical bandage” wasn’t a far cry from plausible.

Smoking tabacco was incredibly important to the men. Why is that? There may be a number of cultural (and perhaps chemical!) reasons, but there are also some pragmatic ones. Think about it: if you could never get warm, at least a cigarette emanates some heat. Furthermore, if you were always hungry, at least you had something in your mouth. Strikingly, after Holness fell in the ocean, he complained not about nearly dieing or about being ice-cold, but only about losing his precious tabacco.

Shackleton was keenly aware of group dynamics and would by no means have left his crew’s arrangement up to Clark (the biologist). Furthermore, his crew had practiced the “escape from the ice” numerous times and “knew the drill” so to speak. The only adjustment that Lansing describes is when Shackleton lightens the load in the boats by disposing of some non-essential equiment. Otherwise, the boat teams did not change.

Unlike most of our maps, this one does not intend to be geographically accurate. In such a landscape, all these ice floes would have been in constant motion and flux. The crew’s path through the ice is also entirely fabricated. Another fabrication is the name “Endurance Glacier” which we needed for a puzzle, but in actual fact (1) didn’t exist in name at this time and (2) is now located near Elephant Island. However, there are a few factual elements that we did incorporate: (1) the aesthetic style matches that of the Episode 1 map which was based on a historical map (2) the marked distances to the various locations are approximately correct both in direction and in number (3) the ice begins more tightly packed and less so later in the maze (4) the path is circuitous and not direct, which was very much the case for this leg of their expedition.

The rest of the photos in the journal pages are unaltered. They do not accurately depict different days (as is suggested by our notations on each photo). The artwork on page 41 (by Marston) does depict the voyage, but not a specific day as far as we know. Since no photos were taken during this time, these paintings survive as some of the most compelling depictions of the journey. They served to inspire and challenge us as we created this series (see any correlations between them and the ice floe map maze?) and we are incredibly grateful for Marston’s artistic abilities.