Ernest Shackleton

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Ernest Shackleton died at 2:50 a.m. on the 5th of January 1922, in a cabin aboard his ship, moored off the island of South Georgia. He was forty-seven years old, far from home, planning yet another voyage into ice. His physician Alexander Macklin had been summoned minutes earlier, and when Macklin suggested Shackleton should try to lead a more regular life, Shackleton replied: "You are always wanting me to give up things, what is it I ought to give up?" Macklin answered: "Chiefly alcohol, Boss." Those were among the last words the two men exchanged.

  He was buried there, in the Grytviken cemetery on South Georgia, at his wife Emily's request. He died heavily in debt. None of his three major Antarctic expeditions had achieved its primary objective. And yet, by 2002, a BBC poll of the 100 Greatest Britons ranked him eleventh.

  How does a man who failed so conspicuously become a model for leadership, courage, and human endurance? That is the question this documentary will try to answer. We will follow Shackleton from a farm in County Kildare to the ice fields of the Weddell Sea, through business disasters and diplomatic failures, through a ship that sank and a crew that somehow lived. We will ask what he was actually like, why his reputation collapsed after his death, and why it came roaring back decades later.

• 2. Roots and Restlessness

  ›

  Kilkea, County Kildare, on the 15th of February 1874, is where the story begins. Henry Shackleton, Ernest's father, had wanted to join the British Army but poor health stopped him; he became a farmer instead. The family traced its English roots to a Quaker named Abraham Shackleton, who had moved to Ireland in 1726 and founded a school in Ballitore. Ernest was the second of ten children and the first of two sons. His younger brother Frank would later achieve a different kind of notoriety as a suspect, ultimately 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 farming to study medicine at Trinity College Dublin. Four years later, the family left Ireland for Sydenham in suburban south London. The move may have had something to do with the 1882 assassination of Lord Frederick Cavendish, the British Chief Secretary for Ireland, which made Anglo-Irish families feel exposed. Despite leaving, Shackleton took lifelong pride in his Irish heritage and frequently called himself "an Irishman".

  From early childhood he was a voracious reader, and books fed in him a hunger for adventure that school could not satisfy. He was educated by a governess until eleven, then attended Fir Lodge Preparatory School in Dulwich, and later Dulwich College. By his own admission, he was bored. He left at sixteen. A Royal Navy cadetship was too expensive and he had already aged past the cutoff. So his father secured him a berth as an apprentice on the square-rigged sailing ship Hoghton Tower, with the North Western Shipping Company.

  Over the next four years, Shackleton learned the sea. In August 1894, he passed his examination for second mate. By 1898, he held a master mariner's certificate, qualifying him to command a British ship anywhere in the world. A shipmate from his time on Union-Castle Line later described him as "a departure from our usual type of young officer", quoting lines from Keats or Browning, a mixture of sensitivity and aggression. It was aboard the troopship Tintagel Castle in March 1900 that he met Cedric Longstaff, an army lieutenant. Cedric's father, Llewellyn Longstaff, was the main financial backer of the British National Antarctic Expedition then being organised in London. Shackleton used that introduction to talk his way onto the expedition.

• 3. A Fractured First Journey

  ›

  On the 31st of July 1901, Discovery departed London's East India Docks, and Shackleton was aboard as third officer. His official duties included managing stores, provisions and the wardroom catering, and, notably, arranging the ship's entertainments. The steward Clarence Hare later said Shackleton was "the most popular of the officers among the crew, being a good mixer".

  Captain Robert Falcon Scott chose Shackleton to join him and the scientist Edward Wilson on the expedition's southern journey, a march toward the highest achievable latitude in the direction of the South Pole. The party set out on the 2nd of November 1902. All 22 of the dogs died during the march after their food became tainted, and the three men took turns suffering snow blindness, frostbite, and scurvy. They reached a Farthest South latitude of 82 degrees 17 minutes, beating the previous record established in 1900 by Carsten Borchgrevink.

  On the return journey, Shackleton collapsed. Wilson's diary entry for the 14th of January 1903 describes him as "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 made it back to the ship on the 3rd of February 1903. Scott then sent Shackleton home on the relief vessel.

  Whether the dismissal was purely medical or also personal has never been settled. The expedition's second-in-command Albert Armitage later claimed Scott had told the ship's doctor that if Shackleton did not go back sick, he would go back in disgrace, but no one corroborated that account. What is clear is that, according to biographer Roland Huntford, Shackleton's attitude toward Scott hardened into what Huntford called "smouldering scorn and dislike", and the wound to his pride made a return to Antarctica feel necessary.

• 4. The Nimrod Push

  ›

  Back in London, Shackleton tried journalism at the Royal Magazine and found it unsatisfying. He took up the secretaryship of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society on the 11th of January 1904. Three months later, on the 9th of April, he married Emily Dorman. The following years brought failed business schemes, including a speculative company aiming to transport Russian troops home from the Far East, and an unsuccessful run for a Dundee constituency in the 1906 general election under the Liberal Unionist Party.

  The wealthy industrialist William Beardmore gave him financial backing and a roving job that kept him solvent while he planned his return south. In February 1907, Shackleton presented his plans to the Royal Geographical Society, naming the venture the British Antarctic Expedition. Sir Philip Lee Brocklehurst subscribed £2,000 for a place on the expedition. Lord Iveagh's contribution came less than two weeks before the ship departed.

  Nimrod left England on the 7th of August 1907. Shackleton had promised Scott he would avoid McMurdo Sound, Scott's claimed territory, but ice conditions near the Barrier Inlet and King Edward VII Land left him no choice. He broke the promise and sailed for McMurdo Sound. Second officer Arthur Harbord called the decision "dictated by common sense". A base was established at Cape Royds, 24 miles north of Hut Point.

  On the 29th of October 1908, Shackleton and three companions, Frank Wild, Eric Marshall, and Jameson Adams, began what Wild called the "Great Southern Journey". On the 9th of January 1909, they reached 88 degrees 23 minutes South, just 112 statute miles from the Pole. They had discovered the Beardmore Glacier and become the first people to stand on the South Polar Plateau. The return was a race against starvation on half-rations. At one point, Shackleton gave his single daily biscuit to the ailing Frank Wild. Wild wrote in his diary: "All the money that was ever minted would not have bought that biscuit and the remembrance of that sacrifice will never leave me."

  Meanwhile, Edgeworth David, Douglas Mawson, and Alistair Mackay located the approximate position of the South Magnetic Pole on the 16th of January 1909. When Shackleton returned to Britain and was asked about not reaching the geographic Pole, he told Emily: "A live donkey is better than a dead lion, isn't it?" King Edward VII received him on the 10th of July 1909, and a knighthood followed in the November Birthday Honours.

• 5. Endurance and Its End

  ›

  After Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole in December 1911, Shackleton fixed on the one Antarctic prize still unclaimed: a crossing of the entire continent from sea to sea. In December 1913 he published details of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. He received more than 5,000 applications for a crew of fifty-six, split evenly across two ships. Scottish jute magnate Sir James Caird donated £24,000; the British government gave £10,000; Midlands industrialist Frank Dudley Docker contributed £10,000.

  Physicist Reginald James was asked during his interview whether he could sing. Others were accepted on sight. Shackleton distributed ship's chores equally among officers, scientists, and able seamen, and socialised with the crew every evening after dinner. Perce Blackborow, a nineteen-year-old Welsh sailor, stowed away after being refused a job; by the time the situation was discovered, turning back was impractical, so he was assigned to the galley. The ship's carpenter Harry McNish kept a cat named Mrs Chippy, who was shot when the ship sank, on the belief that the cat could not have survived what followed.

  Endurance departed South Georgia on the 5th of December 1914. By the 19th of January 1915, she was frozen fast in an ice floe deep in the Weddell Sea. On the 24th of October, water began pouring in, and Shackleton gave the order to abandon ship with the words, "She's going down!". On the 21st of November 1915, Endurance slipped beneath the surface at position 69 degrees 5 minutes S, 51 degrees 30 minutes W.

  For almost two months, the men camped on a flat floe, hoping to drift toward Paulet Island, roughly 250 miles away. The floe broke apart on the 9th of April 1916, and Shackleton ordered the lifeboats launched. After five days at sea, the exhausted crew landed on Elephant Island, 346 miles from where Endurance had sunk. It was the first time any of them had stood on solid ground in 497 days. Shackleton gave his mittens to photographer Frank Hurley, who had lost his own during the boat journey; Shackleton suffered frostbite as a result.

• 6. The James Caird Crossing

  ›

  Elephant Island was far from any shipping route. Shackleton decided to risk an open-boat journey to the South Georgia whaling stations, the nearest reliable source of rescue. The strongest of the three lifeboats was chosen, named the James Caird after the expedition's chief sponsor. Carpenter Harry McNish raised the sides, strengthened the keel, built a makeshift deck of wood and canvas, and sealed the work with oil paint and seal blood. Shackleton packed supplies for four weeks, knowing that if they missed South Georgia within that time, the boat would be lost.

  The James Caird launched on the 24th of April 1916 with Shackleton, captain Frank Worsley, Tom Crean, John Vincent, Timothy McCarthy, and McNish aboard. Worsley's navigational skills guided the boat across 720 nautical miles of the southern ocean. South Georgia appeared on the 8th of May, but hurricane-force winds prevented landing. While the crew sheltered offshore, a 500-ton steamer bound for South Georgia from Buenos Aires sank in that same storm.

  They landed on the island's unoccupied southern shore the next day. To reach the whaling stations on the northern coast, Shackleton chose to cross the island on foot rather than risk another sea journey. He, Worsley, and Crean had only boots fitted with improvised climbing screws, a carpenter's adze, and 50 feet of rope. They crossed 32 miles of mountainous terrain in 36 hours, arriving at the Stromness whaling station on the 20th of May 1916.

  Shackleton's first three attempts to reach the men waiting on Elephant Island were blocked by sea ice. He eventually secured the use of the Yelcho, a small Chilean naval tug, commanded by Captain Luis Pardo. Yelcho reached Elephant Island on the 30th of August 1916. All 22 men were evacuated safely. They had been stranded there for four and a half months.

• 7. A Reputation Deferred, Then Reclaimed

  ›

  At the service held at St Paul's Cathedral, London on the 2nd of March 1922, King George V was represented. The first biography, The Life of Sir Ernest Shackleton by Hugh Robert Mill, appeared within a year, partly as a practical measure to raise money for Shackleton's family; his estate, when the will was proven on the 12th of May 1922, consisted of personal effects valued at £556. He had died roughly £40,000 in debt.

  In the decades that followed, Shackleton was largely eclipsed by Scott, whose polar party had been commemorated on more than thirty monuments in Britain by 1925 alone, including statues, stained glass windows, and memorial tablets. A forty-page booklet on Shackleton published by Oxford University Press in 1943 has been described by cultural historian Stephanie Barczewski as "a lone example of a popular literary treatment of Shackleton in a sea of similar treatments of Scott".

  The tide shifted in April 1959, when Alfred Lansing's book Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage was published. A growing body of writing presented Shackleton in a strongly positive light. At the same time, Roland Huntford's 1979 dual biography Scott and Amundsen, described by Barczewski as a "devastating attack" on Scott's reputation, eroded the rival hero's standing. By 2002, the BBC poll ranked Shackleton eleventh among the 100 Greatest Britons; Scott placed 54th.

  Management writers began drawing on Shackleton's example. Margaret Morrell and Stephanie Capparell's 2001 book Shackleton's Way argued that his people-centred approach offered lessons for corporate leadership. The Centre for Leadership Studies at the University of Exeter offers a course on Shackleton. In Boston, a school was set up on "Outward Bound" principles with the motto "The Journey is Everything". The Shackleton Museum in Athy, County Kildare, was established in 2001 and holds an annual Ernest Shackleton Autumn School.

  The wreck of Endurance was discovered just over a century after Shackleton's death, and in June 2024 wreck hunters found Quest, the vessel of his final voyage, lying intact on the seafloor off Newfoundland at a depth of 390 metres, located by a team led by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.