More than 100 years ago, Sir Ernest Shackleton and the crew of the Endurance expedition, which included Irishman and Antarctic explorer Tom Crean, set sail for the icy waters of the southern hemisphere, on a voyage that would go on to become an epic struggle for survival – both before and after the Endurance was crushed and sunk beneath the ice of Antarctica. Now the images taken by the expedition’s official photographer have been reproduced in high definition, showing the incredible hardships the men endured.

Shot by Australian-born Frank Hurley, the precious and fragile glass plate and celluloid negatives of his photos, stored for a century at the Royal Geographical Society in Kensington Gore, London, have been digitised from the originals for the first time. They capture, in high resolution, a snapshot of life on the pack ice of the Weddell Sea.

The images, currently on display at the Royal Geological Society, can be viewed in the gallery below: