Boom! Two episodes in quick succession. Weren't expecting that, were you? I was too excited about sharing the story of Lester and Bagshawe to wait a month to get this out and so trebled the five buck monthly outlay on the hosting service to service my need to let you know about the two and the dogs. The most disarmingly charming chapter in Antarctic history. Enjoy.

Many Antarctic veterans served in the First World War. This episode I outline the military service of several of those veterans who will make return appearances in the south. The Great War also affected the political landscape of Antarctica and that gets some attention, too. How long's it been since I published a short episode? You'll be halfway through some task or errand and you'll hear me making the house keeping announcements, but don't freak out. You haven't gone blank or nodded out I'm just keeping things in their lane as much as I can. Likely that won't last long as I can see multiple concurrent expeditions looming and with radio keeping them in touch and influencing outcomes where previously everyone operated in isolation it's likely that my discrete expedition/episode strategy is going to come to grief.

The various parties of the ITAE come in out of the cold and most of them immediately head off to war.

Frank Worsley knocks it out of the park, navigating across eight hundred nautical miles of open ocean with four sextant shots. Tom Crean breaks through thin ice for the final time in our saga. Shackleton tries to get back to Elephant Island and the fourth time's the charm.

The Endurance sinks. Plans form, change, re-form, change again, get discarded, get reinstated and re-form after changing. Hoosh is the only constant.

Sir Ernest Shackleton returns to Antarctica, this time in the Weddell Sea, where the two preceding voyages got stuck. Guess what happens. Go on, guess.

Present day geologists offer their perspectives on the Antarctic Peninsula and I record lots of the bow pushing through loose pack because it's mesmerising.

The Ross Ice Barrier claims its final victim of the Heroic Age as Joyce, Richards and Wild struggle to get the depot party back to safety, then McMurdo Sound takes two more lives when a gamble on the weather goes against Mackintosh and Hayward.

Shackleton's depot laying party head to the Ross Sea and fight to get food and fuel to the foot of the Beardmore. Part one of a two parter recounting one of the most harrowing chapters to arise in the heroic era.

Hubert Wilkins makes his first appearance in the Ice Coffee narrative, albeit as a supporting character in someone else's nightmare in the Arctic, and I give you the good oil on sticking to tablets and behavioural responses to motion mediated nausea. The first episode recorded in Antarctica. Muy excitamento. Many spanglish.