Part 2 was on PBS last night. Main takeaway for me was how lucky the James Caird crew was to safely land on South Georgia. They approached an uncharted coast with outlying reefs and islets, in a boat with essentially no windward ability. A gale forced Shackelton to spend an extra night at sea and they were barely able to weather an island that they happened to see during a break in the fog. In last year's recreation of the voyage the boat was warned off by the mother ship because they were slightly off on their navigation and wouldn't have weathered a headland they thought they were south of. I guess it's almost hyperbole by now, but besides being skillful and tough, Shackleton and Worsley were incredibly lucky too. Any number of slight differences in wind force or direction, tide, course steered, time of heaving to, etc would have ended their voyage.

Limk to the series (thanks Brian) in case anyone doesn't get PBS:

http://www.pbs.org/program/chasing-shackleton/