Famous Antarctic pictures come to Lancs
New York, Sydney, and now, ... Leyland!
It's been exhibited all over the world and now the Royal Geographic Society exhibition into Ernest Shackleton's doomed trip to the South Pole is coming to South Ribble.
Leyland's tiny museum is more accustomed to showing local displays and community events, but now it will be hosting its first major exhibition.
Photographs from the daredevil trip across the Antarctic ice will be on display for three months.
Over 100 images, taken by celebrated photographer Frank Hurley, will chart daily life on board the ship Endurance and how the crew survived after the loss of their boat to pack ice.
Hurley's movie of the trip, which was first shown in 1919, will also be screened.
In August 1914, Ernest Shackleton and a crew of 27 men set sail for the Antarctic in an attempt to cross the continent on foot.
Having travelled 1,000 miles south of South Georgia island, the wooden steamer Endurance became stuck fast.
Shackleton and his party were left stranded in the ice for almost two years after they were all-but forgotten by the British public.
And after suffering 20 months of hunger, cold and loneliness he led his team of men across 800 miles of frozen sea to safety.
David Hunt, museum curator, said the exhibition was a real coup for the town.
22 May 2006
