Ernest Shackleton
Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton was an Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic. He was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.
Born in Kilkea, County Kildare, Ireland, Shackleton and his Anglo-Irish family moved to Sydenham in suburban south London when he was ten. Shackleton's first experience of the polar regions was as third officer on Captain Robert Falcon Scott's Discovery Expedition of 19011904, from which he was sent home early on health grounds, after he and his companions Scott and Edward Adrian Wilson set a new southern record by marching to latitude 82° S. During the Nimrod Expedition of 19071909, he and three companions established a new record Farthest South latitude of 88°23′ S, only 97 geographical miles from the South Pole, the largest advance to the pole in exploration history. Also, members of his team climbed Mount Erebus, the most active Antarctic volcano. On returning home, Shackleton was knighted for his achievements by King Edward VII.
After the race to the South Pole ended in December 1911, with Roald Amundsen's conquest, Shackleton turned his attention to the crossing of Antarctica from sea to sea, via the pole. To this end, he made preparations for what became the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 19141917. The expedition was struck by disaster when its ship,, became trapped in pack ice and finally sank in the Weddell Sea off Antarctica on 21 November 1915. The crew escaped by camping on the sea ice until it disintegrated, then by launching the lifeboats to reach Elephant Island and ultimately the South Atlantic island of South Georgia, enduring a stormy ocean voyage of in Shackleton's most famous exploit. He returned to the Antarctic with the Shackleton–Rowett Expedition in 1921 but died of a heart attack while his ship was moored in South Georgia. At his wife's request, he remained on the island and was buried in Grytviken cemetery. The wreck of Endurance was discovered just over a century after Shackleton's death.
Away from his expeditions, Shackleton's life was generally restless and unfulfilled. In his search for rapid pathways to wealth and security, he launched business ventures which failed to prosper, and he died heavily in debt. Upon his death, he was lauded in the press but was thereafter largely forgotten, while the heroic reputation of his rival Scott was sustained for many decades. Later in the 20th century, Shackleton was "rediscovered", and he became a role model for leadership in extreme circumstances. In his 1956 address to the British Science Association, one of Shackleton's contemporaries, Sir Raymond Priestley, said: "Scott for scientific method, Amundsen for speed and efficiency but when disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton", paraphrasing what Apsley Cherry-Garrard had written in a preface to his 1922 memoir The Worst Journey in the World. In 2002, Shackleton was voted eleventh in a BBC poll of the 100 Greatest Britons.
Early years
Childhood and education
Shackleton was born on 15 February 1874, in Kilkea, County Kildare, Ireland. His father, Henry Shackleton, tried to enter the British Army, but his poor health prevented him from doing so; instead he became a farmer and settled in Kilkea. The Shackleton family are of English origin, specifically from West Yorkshire. Shackleton's father was descended from Abraham Shackleton, an English Quaker who moved to Ireland in 1726 and started a school in Ballitore, County Kildare. Shackleton's mother, Henrietta Letitia Sophia Gavan, was descended from the Fitzmaurice family. Ernest was the second of ten children and the first of two sons; the second, Frank, achieved notoriety as a suspect, later exonerated, in the 1907 theft of the so-called Irish Crown Jewels, which have never been recovered.In 1880, when Ernest was six, his father gave up his life as a landowner to study medicine at Trinity College Dublin, moving his family to the city. Four years later, they left Ireland and moved to Sydenham in suburban London. This was partly in search of better professional prospects for the newly qualified doctor, but another factor may have been unease about the family's Anglo-Irish ancestry, following the 1882 assassination by Irish nationalists of Lord Frederick Cavendish, the British Chief Secretary for Ireland. However, Shackleton took lifelong pride in his Irish roots and frequently declared that he was "an Irishman".
From early childhood, Shackleton was a voracious reader, a pursuit which sparked in him a passion for adventure. He was schooled by a governess until the age of eleven, when he began at Fir Lodge Preparatory School in West Hill, Dulwich, in southeast London. At the age of thirteen, he entered Dulwich College. As a youngster, Shackleton did not particularly distinguish himself as a scholar, and was said to be "bored" by his studies.
He was quoted later as saying: "I never learned much geography at school Literature, too, consisted in the dissection, the parsing, the analysing of certain passages from our great poets and prose-writers ... teachers should be very careful not to spoil taste for poetry for all time by making it a task and an imposition." In his final term at the school, he was still able to achieve fifth place in his class of thirty-one.
Merchant Navy officer
Shackleton's restlessness at school was such that he was allowed to leave at sixteen and go to sea. One option was a Royal Navy officer cadetship in the at Dartmouth, but this was too expensive, and Shackleton passed the upper age limit of fourteen and a half in 1888. Alternatives were the mercantile marine cadet ships Worcester and, or an apprenticeship "before the mast" on a sailing vessel. This third option was chosen. His father was able to secure him a berth with the North Western Shipping Company, aboard the square-rigged sailing ship Hoghton Tower.Over the next four years at sea, Shackleton learned his trade and visited many parts of the world, forming a variety of acquaintances and learning to associate with people from many different walks of life. In August 1894, he passed his examination for second mate and accepted a post as third officer on a tramp steamer of the Welsh Shire Line. Two years later, he had obtained his first mate's ticket, and in 1898, he was certified as a master mariner, qualifying him to command a British ship anywhere in the world.
In 1900, he joined Union-Castle Line, the regular mail and passenger carrier between Britain and South Africa. One of his shipmates recorded that Shackleton was "a departure from our usual type of young officer", content with his own company though not aloof, "spouting lines from Keats or Browning", a mixture of sensitivity and aggression but not unsympathetic. Following the outbreak of the Boer War in 1899, Shackleton transferred to the troopship Tintagel Castle where, in March 1900, he met Cedric Longstaff, an army lieutenant whose father Llewellyn W. Longstaff was the main financial backer of the British National Antarctic Expedition then being organised in London.
Shackleton used his acquaintance with the son to obtain an interview with Longstaff senior, with a view to obtaining a place on the expedition. Impressed by Shackleton's keenness, Longstaff recommended him to Sir Clements Markham, the expedition's overlord, making it clear that he wanted Shackleton accepted. On 17 February 1901, his appointment as third officer to the expedition's ship was confirmed; on 4 June he was commissioned into the Royal Navy, with the rank of sub-lieutenant in the Royal Naval Reserve. Although officially on leave from Union-Castle, this was in fact the end of Shackleton's Merchant Navy service.
''Discovery'' Expedition, 1901–1903
The British National Antarctic Expedition—known as the Discovery Expedition after the ship Discovery—was the brainchild of Sir Clements Markham, president of the Royal Geographical Society, and had been many years in preparation. Led by Robert Falcon Scott, a Royal Navy torpedo lieutenant lately promoted commander, the expedition had objectives that included scientific and geographical discovery.Although Discovery was not a Royal Navy unit, Scott required the crew, officers and scientific staff to submit to the conditions of the Naval Discipline Act, meaning that the ship and expedition were run on Royal Navy lines. Shackleton accepted this approach, even though his own background and instincts favoured a different, more informal style of leadership. His particular duties were listed as: "In charge of sea-water analysis. Ward-room caterer. In charge of the holds, stores, and provisions He also arranges the entertainments."
Discovery departed from London's East India Docks on 31 July 1901, arriving at the Antarctic coast, via Madeira, Cape Town and New Zealand, on 9 January 1902. After landing, Shackleton took part in an experimental balloon flight on 4 February. He also participated, with the scientists Edward A. Wilson and Hartley T. Ferrar, in the first sledging trip from the expedition's winter quarters in McMurdo Sound, a journey which established a safe route on to the Great Ice Barrier. Confined to the iced-in Discovery throughout the Antarctic winter of 1902, Shackleton edited the expedition's magazine the South Polar Times, a regular publication that kept everyone onboard entertained. According to steward Clarence Hare, Shackleton was "the most popular of the officers among the crew, being a good mixer", though claims that this represented an unofficial rivalry to Scott's leadership are unsupported.
Scott chose Shackleton to accompany Wilson and himself on the expedition's southern journey, a march southwards to achieve the highest possible latitude in the direction of the South Pole. This was not a serious attempt on the Pole, although the attainment of a high latitude was of great importance to Scott, and the inclusion of Shackleton indicated a high degree of personal trust. The party set out on 2 November 1902. Scott later wrote that the march was "a combination of success and failure". They reached a record Farthest South latitude of 82°17′ S, beating the previous record established in 1900 by Carsten Borchgrevink.
The journey was marred by the poor performance of the dogs, who rapidly fell sick after their food had become tainted. All 22 dogs died during the march. The three men all suffered at times from snow blindness, frostbite and, ultimately, scurvy. On the return journey, Shackleton had by his own admission "broken down" and could no longer carry out his share of the work. He later denied Scott's claim in The Voyage of the Discovery, that he had been carried on the sledge. He was in a severely weakened condition; Wilson's diary entry for 14 January 1903 reads: "Shackleton has been anything but up to the mark, and today he is decidedly worse, very short-winded, and coughing constantly, with more serious symptoms which need not be detailed here, but which are of no small consequence a hundred and sixty miles from the ship, and full loads to pull all the way."
The party finally arrived back at the ship on 3 February 1903. After a medical examination that proved inconclusive, Scott decided to send Shackleton home on the relief ship, which had arrived in McMurdo Sound in January. Scott wrote: "He ought not to risk further hardships in his present state of health." There is conjecture that Scott's motive for removing him was resentment of Shackleton's popularity, and that ill-health was used as an excuse to get rid of him.
Years after the deaths of Scott, Wilson and Shackleton, the expedition's second-in-command Albert Armitage claimed that there had been a falling-out on the southern journey, and that Scott had told the ship's doctor that " he does not go back sick he will go back in disgrace". There is no corroboration of Armitage's story. Shackleton and Scott remained on friendly terms, at least until the publication of Scott's account of the southern journey in The Voyage of the Discovery. While in public they appeared mutually respectful and cordial, according to biographer Roland Huntford, Shackleton's attitude to Scott turned to "smouldering scorn and dislike"; salvage of wounded pride required "a return to the Antarctic and an attempt to outdo Scott".