Dan Snow leads team retracing Shackleton's desperate South Georgia crossing

A team of eight documentary-makers is flying out to recreate Sir Ernest Shackleton's 1916 crossing of South Georgia, the trek that turned a shipwreck into one of history's most famous rescues. TV historian Dan Snow is joined by South Pole explorer Preet Chandi and Dr John Shears, who led the 2022 expedition that found the wreck of Shackleton's ship, Endurance.

Speaking to the Press Association from Montevideo, Snow called Shackleton's escape 'the single greatest self-rescue, the single greatest escape in recorded history - there's nothing else like it'. He added that Shackleton was 'leading the most remote group of human beings on the planet at the time'.

The backstory is brutal. Shackleton lost Endurance to the ice in 1915 during the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, ferried his men to Elephant Island in two lifeboats, then took five of them on an 800-mile run across the Southern Ocean to South Georgia to find help. He left 22 colleagues behind, crossed the island's freezing interior and finally raised the alarm at a whalers' station in Stromness.

The modern team will land on the island by rigid inflatable boat launched from a cruise ship, then navigate toward Stromness while following the 1916 route as closely as they can. Climate change has pushed the glaciers back over the past century, so the path cannot be identical - and the mountainside slide that Shackleton and two companions survived may simply be too dangerous to attempt.

Snow is clear his trip won't match the original ordeal, modern technology and all. 'To walk in those footsteps, as Shackleton makes one of the greatest journeys of history, is something that I never imagined I'd be doing,' he said, calling it 'the most exciting and the most extraordinary privilege'. Of South Georgia itself he added: 'This is still one of the most remote and unspoiled places on Earth.'

The documentary is being made in partnership with the Dundee-based charity South Georgia Heritage Trust.