cramped conditions

Luke asked me for a lift to Lockerbie this morning as he was catching a train to Edinburgh to meet his friend Cameron, who was flying in from New York. I thought it would be a good opportunity to visit Edinburgh myself as I wanted to see The Galloway Hoard - maybe the last chance if enough money is not raised to keep it in Scotland.

The Hoard is AMAZING! If you have the chance, go to see it this week...

Anyway, by chance I came across another exhibition which is also a must-see, especially for photographers. At the National Library, you can see the photographs which Frank Hurley took on the Endurance expedition, led by Shackleton across the Antarctic. The story of the expedition is the stuff of legend, and so are the photographs. I have a book of them at home, but here you can see the original glass plate negatives.

When Shackleton sailed for South Georgia in a tiny boat, the men he left behind on Elephant Island lived crowded together in an upturned boat for 4 months of winter cold and darkness, not knowing whether rescue would ever arrive. The picture above, from a diary kept by Hurley, gives only a small indication of what conditions must have been like.

The men were eventually rescued in August 1916, 24 months and 22 days after leaving the UK.