In late November 1935 the American explorer, Lincoln Ellsworth, left Dundee Island at the north of the Antarctic Peninsula. With his pilot, Hubert Hollick-Kenyon, his intention was to cross the Antarctic and reach the abandoned American base at Little America. Soon the Americans lost contact with the rest of the world and when no word came from them, the Commonwealth Government of Australia called on the government of the United Kingdom to send a ship to effect a rescue. Britain's response was considered a last flourish of empire, as much political as humanitarian. This book now describes, often for the first time, the plans and counter plans, the conflicts and the challenges, which lay behind the remarkable way in which the research ship, RRS Discovery II, a ship outwardly unsuited to the task, interrupted a carefully planned programme of scientific research to find the Americans and, aided by outstanding airmen from the RAAF, bring them back to the waiting world.