Sir Ernest Shackleton
Sir Ernest Shackleton’s father wished his son to become a doctor, but Shackleton himself was certain from his boyhood that he would not. 'I seemed to vow to myself that some day I would go to the region of ice and snow and go on and on till I came to one of the poles of the earth, the end of the axis upon which this great round ball turns.' He wrote this in his autobiography and instead of taking up a medical career, aged sixteen he went to and by the age of twenty four had qualified as a ship’s Master, making him able to captain a British ship on any sea. Shackleton’s portrait -
In 1900 he volunteered for Scott's National Antarctic Expedition. There have been many allusions to acrimony and dislike between the two men, but apart from Scott’s navigator, who may have felt Shackleton’s naval skills impinged on his own area of expertise, nobody at the time seems to have noticed any difficulty between the two men. In fact, having impressed Scott with his balanced and determined personality, he was chosen to accompany Scott to the South Pole on the famous Discovery expedition in the summer of 1901.
The trip was a harbinger of what would follow, for both men. Shackleton became seriously ill on the outward trip and was returned home. Once recovered, he was asked to take a ship to rescue Scott and persuade him not to spend another winter at the Pole. Shackleton declined, feeling that it would be more honourable to 'prove himself a better man' with his own expedition than to humiliate Scott by rescuing him.
He is supposed to have placed what has become one of the world's most famous advertisements in the Times of London in December 1901, ‘Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages. Bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.’ While some historians feel sure the advertisement existed, nobody has been able to trace in which newspaper it was placed. It may be that rather than a general circulation newspaper, this message was circulated between the various scientific societies and gentlemen’s clubs of the city.
Shackleton’s dream came true when he was appointed commander of the Nimrod Expedition which travelled in the South Pole between 1907 – 09, during which his team climbed Mount Erebus, made numerous important scientific discoveries and set a record by approaching to within 97 miles of the South Pole.
After returning to London to be knighted in 1909, he commanded another voyage on the Endurance starting in 1914. The ship was crushed in the ice in 1915, and Shackleton he led his men to safety against all odds, enduring an incredible journey across 800 frozen miles to South Georgia to get aid. This mission was a testament to his skill as a leader of men.
However, the foreshadowing of his first expedition with Scott was to come true. Scott died in 1912, on the ice, during his own abortive attempt to reach the South Pole and in 1921, when Shackleton set out on another Antarctic expedition to circumnavigate the Antarctic continent by sea, the ill health that had plagued him from early youth finally caught up with him. He died of a heart attack on board his ship, the Quest, while anchored off South Georgia in 1922. His body was being returned to England when his widow requested that the burial take place on Grytviken, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands instead and he was buried there on March 5, 1922.
James Caird Society, a commemoration of Shackleton’s life and mission.
Other Great Explorers
tenzing, Vancouver, Almagro, Alvarado, Balboa, burton, clark, drake, eriksson, grant, heyerdahl, hillary, humboldt, ingstad, james cook, livingstone, magellan, Piccard, Raleigh, Scott, Shackleton