Exploration & Endurance: Sir Ernest Shackleton

“I choose life over death for myself and my friends…I believe it is in our nature to explore, to reach out into the unknown. The only true failure would be not to explore at all.” — Ernest Shackleton

Ireland, throughout her long history has produced some of the world’s most prolific scientists, inventors, and explorers. The 19th and early 20th centuries saw a massive interest in unlocking the secrets of the most remote and uninhabitable places on the earth, the North and South Poles. While not the first, and certainly not the last explorer in Antarctica, Ernest Shackleton’s name has become synonymous with this heroic era of polar exploration.

Ernest Henry Shackleton was born on 15 February 1874 in County Kildare, Ireland, the second of ten children. At the age of six, his father gave up farming and moved the family to Dublin where he studied to qualify as a doctor. Four years later, the family moved to South London where his Shackleton’s father would practice medicine for the next 30 years. Despite his father’s wishes to follow in his footsteps, Shackleton joined the British Merchant Navy at the age of 16 following the completion of his studies at Dulwich College. Becoming a master mariner, Shackleton traveled widely but always held a keen interest in the exploration of the poles.

The Shackleton Family Motto

In 1901, Shackleton joined an expedition to the South Pole led by Captain Robert Falcon Scott. A year and a half after the Discovery set sail for Antarctica, Scott, Shackleton, and another officer were able to trek within 400 miles of the Pole, closer than anyone else had ever come. After this Shackleton became ill and was sent home from the expedition early, having gained valuable knowledge, skills, and a fire to lead his own expedition.

In 1907. Shackleton began making plans for his own expedition. His goal was to reach actually reach the pole. He was granted a Union Jack from The Queen to carry on the journey. The expedition left from New Zealand in 1908 on a ship called the Nimrod. On 28 January, the ship froze in the ice and the following day they lowered a motor car, the first on the continent, onto the ice. Ten months later on 29 October, Shackleton and three other men set out for the South Pole about 850 miles away. On 9 January 1909, they were forced to turn back due to a lack of food, they were just 97 miles from their destination. Despite failing to reach the Pole, this expedition had come closer than any other. Many other scientific discoveries were made during the voyage and the team made the first documented climb of Mount Erebus. Upon his return home in 1909, Shackleton was Knighted by King Edward VII.

In December 1911, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen finally reached the South Pole, followed by Robert Falcon Scott in January 1912. With this feat met, Shackleton needed a new goal and a new plan. He began making plans to cross the continent via the Pole, a journey of roughly 2,000 miles. In 1914, Shackleton made his way to Antarctica aboard his ship the Endurance but in early 1915 disaster struck. The ship became trapped in the ice and sank ten months later when the hull buckled under the pressure. By the time of the sinking, Shackleton and his 28 crew members had already abandoned the ship and were living on the floating ice. After five months on the ice, the crew found themselves on Elephant Island, a small island of ice and rock, inhabited by only seals and penguins. With the Antarctic winter closing in, Shackleton and five other men set sail in a 22-foot lifeboat. They traveled 800 miles over some of the roughest seas on earth to the island of South Georgia. It took 15 days to cross the water and several more to cross South Georgia over land to get to the whaling station on the north side of the island. It would take four months and four attempts before Shackleton was able to rescue the rest of the crew from Elephant Island. Despite the utter failure of the expedition, not a single member of the Endurance crew was lost.

After serving as a major in the British Army during World War I and an advisor in the North Russia Expeditionary Force, Shackleton began planning his fourth and final expedition to Antarctica. Many of the men who had sailed on the Endurance, signed on to sail with their “boss” once again. Sailing aboard the Quest, the goal of the Shackleton-Rowett Antarctic Expedition was to circumnavigate the continent. Unfortunately, the expedition would never see completion. On 5 January 1922, Shackleton suffered a heart attack and died on board his ship while it was moored off South Georgia. He was 47 years old. At the request of his wife, Shackleton was buried at the Grytviken cemetery on the island of South Georgia. He was survived by his wife of 16 years, Lady Emily Shackleton, and their three children Raymond, Cecily, and Edward. Shackleton’s death also marked the end of this era of Antarctic exploration.

In 2022, the legacy of Ernest Shackleton was brought back into the limelight when after, 106 years, his lost ship the Endurance was found about four miles from where it sank in the Weddell Sea. Remarkably intact, the ship now sits about 10,000 feet underwater where you can still see the name Endurance clearly across the ship’s stern.