English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, American, Australian and a New Zealander formed the crew.

Across the crew their ages ranged from 20 to 48 and the average age was 31. Sir Ernest Shackleton was 40 when the ship left Plymouth.

Shackleton chose the following officers for the voyage - Frank Wild, Frank Worsley, Lionel Greenstreet, Tom Crean and Alfred Cheetham, they accompanied the crew and the scientists on board.

Many of the crew had been to Antarctica before including Tom Crean who had sailed with Scott on the Terra Nova and Discovery expeditions and Frank Wild marched with Shackleton to the South Pole on the abandoned Nimrod expedition.

Shackleton took 69 dogs on the Endurance sourced from Canada the dogs were essentially mongrels but bred for extreme winter conditions.

A tabby cat taken on board by the carpenter Harry McNish, "Mrs Chippy" was later found to be male! But by then the name had stuck.

To pass the time when stranded for months on the ice the crew played football matches, arranged dog racing events as well as keeping on top of their crew duties.

After abandoning the ship in October 1915 the crew spent an incredible 309 days abandoned, living on the barren and inhospitable ice of Antarctica before their rescue on 30 August 1916.

Wild, Worsley, Macklin, McIlroy, Hussey, Kerr, McLeod and Green, from Endurance, all sailed with Quest, the expedition Shackleton led but fatally suffered a heart attack and died.