A HUNDRED YEARS ago one of the greatest stories of human endurance and courage unfolded at the ends of the earth in which a sailor from Newport played his part. Martin Wade tells the story of Perce Blackborow.

Among the 28 experienced polar explorers, sailors and scientists who sailed for Antarctica in 1914 was a young seaman from Newport who had stowed away on their ship, the Endurance.

The men were part of the expedition aiming to be the first to cross the frozen continent, led by Sir Ernest Shackleton. The greatness of their story lies not in a trek across this inhospitable place, but in how they returned after their ship was swallowed by ice and they were marooned for almost two years.

Perce Blackborow was born 1896 in Pill and went to sea to serving as a steward in the Merchant Navy. His ship had sunk off Montevideo in Uruguay in 1914 and he was in Buenos Aires, capital of neighbouring Argentina, when the Endurance called as Shackleton's expedition made their way south.

Perce, together with William Bakewell, an American sailor, who had experience in polar climbs went onboard and asked to join. Bakewell was accepted, but the inexperienced 18-year-old Percy was not.

Bakewell helped Blackborow get aboard and hid him in a locker where he was discovered after three days at sea.

The hapless Blackborow, who was seated as he could not stand after three days hiding in the cramped locker, was subjected to a furious tirade by Shackleton. The fearsome leader finished by saying simply: "Do you know that on these expeditions we often get very hungry, and if there is a stowaway available he is the first to be eaten?” To which the Pill boy cheekily replied: “They’d get a lot more meat off you, sir.”

Reportedly stifling a smile, Shackleton ordered him to be introduced to the cook and Blackborow was taken on as a steward.

The Endurance sailed south with the aim of reaching land in Antarctica before winter set in to prepare for the trek across Antarctica when the polar spring came. But she became stuck in pack ice and on 24 February, Shackleton ordered the abandonment of ship's routine and her conversion to a winter station. She drifted slowly north with the ice through the following months. Members of the expedition kept busy training the dogs for the trek across the continent.

Percy's job was the vital one of helping to feed the crew. In this he assisted Charles Green the cook. Thomas Orde-Lees, expedition store-keeper, spoke warmly of "Blackborow my faithful friend in the pantry", saying the Newport man was "intensely loyal to the expedition, and Sir Ernest has a very high opinion of him. He is a scrupulously clean and conscientious young fellow. For his age he is extraordinarily reliable and competent."

He added though: "His only enemy is his own hasty temper, but he is immensely improved since he has been in this ship. He takes a great interest in the dogs and all outdoor exercise and games. "

As spring came in September, the ice began to break, but the movements of the vast icebergs put extreme pressures on the ship's hull. The stress of tons of ice told on the Endurance when she began to break up in late October. The men later told of the ice forcing the ship’s engine through the galley. Beams bended and snapped with a sound like artillery fire. She finally sank on November 21.

Before the Endurance went down, the men rescued what stores they could and spent another two months living on shifting ice floes. Shackleton decided to haul the ship’s three boats across the ice to a place from where they could be launched in open water. As the floes started to break up they sailed in three open boats on a hellish journey where they braved mountainous seas, freezing winds and marauding killer whales.

By late April they reached Elephant Island 346 miles from where the Endurance sank. During the journey, Blackborow made the mistake of wearing leather rather than the cold-weather felt boots and developed frost-bite in his toes.

As they neared the beach on Elephant Island, Shackleton said that Perce, as the youngest, could have the honour of being the first human to set foot on the island.

Sir Ernest wrote later: "A thought came to me that the honour should belong to the youngest member of the Expedition, so I told Blackborow to jump over."

Blackborow was clearly suffering the effects of the journey: "He seemed to be in a state almost of coma, and in order to avoid delay I helped him, perhaps a little roughly, over the side of the boat. He promptly sat down in the surf and did not move. Then I suddenly realized what I had forgotten, that both his feet were frost-bitten badly."

In a bid to reach help, seven of the team, led by Sir Ernest, then sailed in one of the boats, the James Caird, for South Georgia across 750 miles of wild South Atlantic seas as winter closed in.

The remaining men waved them off knowing that if they did not survive, no-one would know they were stranded in this desolate place.

The two remaining boats are upturned and placed on low walls of stone. The sides were closed in with the remnants of the men’s tents. Here, they sheltered for the next four and a half months. Half-blinded by the smoke from a seal blubber stove, they would spend days cooped up in frozen sleeping bags. They spend much of the Antarctic winter sheltering here from howling gales and freezing temperatures living off seal and penguin meat.

By June, Blackborow’s feet had become gangrenous. Luckily for Perce, James McIlroy, the expedition doctor, was one of the men on Elephant Island, but in this hellish place there was nowhere clean to give medical help.

Waiting for a day warm enough to vapourize their scant supply of chloroform, McIlroy cleared the hut on June 14th and amputated the toes of Perce’s left foot. One of the men watching the operation noted of Blackborow: “The poor beggar behaved splendidly…When he came to he was as cheerful as anything and started joking directly.”

Meanwhile, heroic though the story of the expedition is until now, the rescue party had achieved yet more. They had braved mountainous seas and reached South Georgia in what was a great act of navigation and endurance. Still they had not reached help and three of the party trudged over the mountains and glaciers of the island in the tattered remains of their winter gear. They arrived at the whaling station of Stromness having completed a journey never made before.

After many attempts, a ship carrying the rescue party made it through the ice to Elephant Island.

They were taken from the island by the steam ship ‘Yelcho’ which took the battered survivors to safety. Crowds greeted them at the Chilean port of Punta Arenas when they arrived in late August. The men asked when the war, which broke out on the day they left England, had finished. They were stunned to be told it went on still.

Perce spent three months in Punta Arenas recovering from his operation. On returning to Newport he volunteered for the Royal Navy but was turned down because of his amputated toes. He served in the Merchant Navy until 1919 and went on to become a boatman at Alexandra Docks, Newport.

He was awarded the Polar Medal after his return from Antarctica, but the modest hero, rarely talked about the expedition.

Perce then lived at 41 Maesglas Grove, where he died aged 54 in 1949 of bronchitis and heart disease. This bold son of Newport who braved polar winters and the wrath of a great explorer is buried at St. Woolos Cemetery.

Read how Perce Blackborrow's grandson retraced his steps to the bleak Antarctic and set foot on Elephant Island

Newly digitised images of the Endurance expedition which tell this story of human survival are now on display at the Royal Geographical Society. The photographs, taken by Frank Hurley, reveal previously unseen details of the crew’s epic struggle for survival both before and after their ship was destroyed.

The Enduring Eye exhibition opened to the public on Saturday 21 November, exactly 100 years to the day that the crushed Endurance sank beneath the sea ice of the Weddell Sea, and runs until 28 February 2016.