Shackleton's Stowaway by
Victoria McKernan is about Perce, a stowaway on Ernest Shackleton's ship, the
Endurance, during the 1914-1916 antarctic expedition. Just one month after setting out on their expedition, the ship is enclosed in ice. Eventually, all 28 men have to abandon the ship to live on an ice floe. They watch the ship sink before their eyes. They use three life rafts to get to Elephant Island (barely). Shackleton decides that he needs to go for help if they will have any hope at all. He takes a team of 6 in the only remaining life raft and heads toward South Georgia Island, the place from which they left nearly two years before. Perce, through all of this, works hard at every job he's assigned. He chips ice away from the ship, works in the galley, tends to the sled dogs and even rows the life rafts. By the time they are rescued (after four failed attampts by Shackleton's team), all of the men are in tough shape. Every single one of them makes it home from Antarctica, however!
This book is based on a true story. All of the events in the story actually took place. Victoria McKernan made up some of the dialogue and moved time around a bit to make it a good novel. She used the sailors' journals and interviews with remaining family members to support her work of historical fiction. I loved this book. It was exciting, funny, heartbreaking, suspenseful, and touching. I found that I was really pulling for the men, but Perce especially, as they found ways to work through this disasterous experience. This is one of the 2008-2009 Maud Hart Lovelace Nominees.
Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World: The Extraordinary True Story of Shackleton and the Endurance by Jennifer Armstrong is a nonfiction account of what actually happened on Sir Ernest Shackleton's failed attempt at reading the south pole in 1914. Jennifer Armstrong used many resources as she compiled all of the information, including the personal diaries of the shipmates!
