After the British ship Endurance (pictured above) became stuck in an ice sheet in the Weddell Sea off Antarctica in January 1915, the expedition’s official photographer, Frank Hurley, made a brave decision. He waded into the icy water filling the lower deck to rescue hundreds of his precious glass-plate photo negatives.

To Hurley’s dismay, Ernest Shackleton, the expedition leader, informed him he would have to abandon most of the negatives because they would weigh down their escape lifeboats. Hurley went through the plates one by one and smashed 400 of them on the ice before he could change his mind and risk his life to return for them, salvaging 120.

Hurley also had to relinquish most of his photography equipment and rely on a pocket camera and a few rolls of film to capture the crew’s fight for survival as they camped on the ice near their trapped ship for months. “It is beyond conception, even to us, that we are dwelling on a colossal ice raft, with but five feet of ice separating us from 2,000 fathoms of ocean, and drifting along under the caprices of wind and tides, to heaven knows where,” wrote Hurley in his diary.

The Endurance sank for good in November 1915. After months camped on the ice, in April 1916, Hurley and the rest of the crew took his fragile photo negatives and remaining supplies on lifeboats to the uninhabited Elephant Island. From there, realising there was little chance of rescue, Shackleton and five men took the James Caird lifeboat (pictured below) on a perilous journey of 1200 kilometres across the Southern Ocean to seek rescue in South Georgia, eventually rescuing the men (including Hurley) who had remained on Elephant Island in August 1916.

While stranded on the ice sheet in the Weddell Sea, Hurley proved to be a hardy survivor, fashioning a blubber stove from an old drum and eating the expedition’s sledge dogs when food supplies ran short. Pictured below is Leonard Hussey lifting the largest sledge dog, Samson.

Hurley, an Australian photographer, was recruited for the expedition to Antarctica after Shackleton saw a film he had made of Douglas Mawson’s earlier Australasian Antarctic Expedition, for which he was also the official photographer. Unfortunately, the Shackleton expedition never succeeded in crossing the Antarctic continent.

Now, the UK’s Royal Geographical Society, in collaboration with Shackleton’s granddaughter and others, has published (Riverside Press), a compilation of Hurley’s images that survived. It features the original glass-plate negatives alongside new, high-definition scans that uncover previously hidden faces and details, such as in the image below. Digitisation of the negative revealed a sixth crew member, hidden behind the smoke from the stove.

“The survival of these negatives through such a journey in such conditions to reach the safety of the Royal Geographical Society’s collections is extraordinary,” says the society’s president, Jane Francis, in the book. “[Hurley’s] images are an example of documentary photography at its finest. He was committed to his craft and would often put himself in danger to create the perfect image. Each of his negatives is not just a visual record of a particular moment, but a beautifully composed, carefully considered piece of art.”