SHIPWRECK AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD - ANTARCTIC BOOK

SHIPWRECK AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD

THE EXTRAORDINARY TRUE STORY OF SHACKLETON AND THE ENDURANCE
Jennifer Armstrong

Just Imagine
Just imagine yourself in the most hostile place on earth.  It's not the Sahara or the Gobi Desert. It's not the Arctic.  The most hostile place on earth is the Antarctic, the location of the South Pole.  North Pole, South Pole - what's the difference?  The Arctic is mostly water - with ice on top, of course - and that ice is never more than a few feet thick.  But under the South Pole lies a continent that supports glaciers up to two miles in depth. Almost the entire southern continent is covered by ice. This mammoth icecap presses down so heavily that it actually distorts the shape of the earth. The ice never melts; it clings to the bottom of the world, spawning winds, storms, and weather that affect the whole planet.
    And of all the weather it creates, the weather the Antarctic creates for itself is by far the worst. In the winter, the temperature can sink to 100 degrees below zero Farenheit. Cold air masses sliding down the sides of the glaciers speed up until the become winds of close to 200 miles per hour. When winter descends on the southern continent, the seas surrounding the land begin to freeze at the terrifying rate of two square miles every minute, until the frozen sea reaches an area of 7 million square miles, about twice the size of the United States. It is truly the most hostile environment this side of the moon. Just imagine yourself stranded in such a place.
    In 1915, a British crew of twenty-eight men was stranded there, with no ship and no way to contact the outside world. They all survived.

134 page plastic-covered ex-library book (usual library stamps and markings) in good condition