Warning: contains spoilers.
When Ernest Shackleton s ship, the Endurance, was trapped in unyielding ice, it was clear the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition had taken a bad turn. In late 1915, after months of anxious waiting, the sheer pressure of the ice crushed the most advanced ship of its time like a nutshell , according to captain Frank Worsley. Stranded on the ice for ten months, the entire crew, battered but alive, was eventually rescued. Far less lucky was the crew of the whaleship Essex, which sank in the middle of the Pacific after a sperm whale attack in 1820. When the few remaining survivors were rescued months later, they were sucking the bone marrow from what remained of their fellow sailors.
The crew of the Obra Dinn share a similarly morbid fate.