When Sir Ernest Shackleton's dreams of crossing Antarctica foundered with his ship Endurance in the ice of the Weddell Sea in October 1915, he could only wonder what had become of his support party on the other side of the continent. After almost ninety years Polar Castaways finally tells that story, filling one of the major gaps in the history of the heroic era' of polar exploration. The task of the Ross Sea component of the expedition was to lay the all-important depots in support of the traverse party to be led by Shackleton. preparation. Matters were made even worse when, in May 1915,...