150 Years Ago: The Birth of Ernest Shackleton

150 years ago today: the birth of Polar Explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton (1874-1922).

It gives me particular pleasure to write about him on the day after Valentine’s Day, for Shackleton was one of many topics my wife and I talked about on our first date — along with Henry VIII, the William Desmond Taylor Murder, and several other topics. She’d actually written a play set in Antarctica, and owns these books:

But we’d both been buffs since childhood. The explorer I’d always been most interested was the doomed, fatally arrogant Robert Falcon Scott, whose pig-headedness resulted in the deaths of his entire expedition in 1911. The entire point of Shackleton’s story is the opposite (everyone survived), which is just as compelling yet more upbeat. I’d known about both stories since the third grade; a particularly intense teacher spent weeks telling the class this history. At home, we had a Time-Life book with pictures of the Scott expedition when I was a kid. Decades later, I saw an exhibition about Shackleton at the American Museum of Natural History, so the tale was relatively fresh in my mind on that first date with Carolyn.

Ernest Shackleton had actually served under Scott on an Antarctic expedition in 1901; maybe this is where he learned how NOT to behave as a leader. Shackleton was a merchant mariner and an amiable fellow; Scott ran his excursions along strict military lines, which made harsh conditions seem still harsher to the men under him.

Shackleton led his own first expedition to Antarctica in 1907 and it was a qualified success; he and his companions reached the furthest point south ever attained by human beings, only a hundred or so miles from the South Pole. The Pole was finally reached in 1911 by Norwegian Roald Amundsen, with Scott’s British team arriving second, perishing on the return.

The Pole having been attained, Shackleton returned to cross the entire continent from sea to sea in 1914. And this is when the incredible tale of the ship Endurance and her crew of 27 begins. From the outset, their luck was bad. The ship set out at around the very same time that World War One began, meaning that whatever happened at the bottom of the world, there would be no resources available from the British government for a rescue. The crew would be on their own. And disaster did indeed strike. In early 1915 the Endurance was trapped in pack ice in the waters off Antarctica. The men lived on their supplies for several months, camping out on the ice in tents. Finally, after seven months of this ordeal, the ship was finally crushed and sank. After several days, the men climbed into three lifeboats and rowed about 350 miles to rocky, ice-covered Elephant Island, the journey taking about five days.

With no shelter and no vegetation on the island, it was necessary to go for help. Shackleton left 22 of the men behind to shift as best they could for themselves while he and a crew of five took one of the lifeboats on an 800 mile journey to a whaling station on South Georgia Island. This was a 20 foot long, open vessel, over rough seas, steered by dead reckoning. The men endured freezing temperatures, starvation, and fatigue. Remarkably the journey was successful, taking about two and a half weeks. It’s considered one of the most impressive feats of sailing in history. But that’s not all!

Once they arrived, the men had to climb over a steep 4,000 foot mountain to get to the inhabited part of the island. Getting a rescue ship to pick up the other men was also difficult. By the time they were able to pick up the men left back on Elephant Island, four and a half months had elapsed. Remarkably, every one of them had survived.

This is still only half of the story, though the other half is seldom told. Shackleton had actually gone to Antarctica with two ships. The other vessel, the Aurora had left a party of men on the Ross Ice Shelf to lay a series of supply depots for the expedition that was to follow. They had actually completed their mission, but then the Aurora’s anchor line snapped and the ship was unable to return, stranding the landing party. So those men had to suffer for an additional several months before they could be rescued. Three of that party died.

Incredibly, upon returning to England in 1917, Shackleton immediately went on to serve in various capacities in World War One and the Russian Civil War. Then he made the rounds of the lecture circuits, finally embarking on a new expedition to Antarctica in late 1921. He suffered a fatal heart attack en route.

A century later the remains of the Endurance were located by the crew of Endurance22 in the Weddell Sea at a depth of nearly 10,000 feet. I missed that news! It was just a few months ago!

One last miracle. Recall that these events occurred in the 20th century. Incredibly they were well documented in media, and that media SURVIVED. There are tons of photographs of the ordeal, as well as silent movies. As Shackleton was a frequent lecturer, there are also audio recordings of his voice! Much of this stuff is freely available to watch on Youtube.

The story was dramatized for British television twice, in two separate mini-series’, each called Shackleton. The first, in 1983 starred David Schofield; a second, in 2002, starred Kenneth Branagh. And there’s your movie angle!