Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton CVO OBE, (15 February 1874 – 5 January 1922) was an Anglo-Irish explorer who was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. His first experience of the polar regions was as third officer on Captain Scott’s Discovery Expedition, 1901–04, from which he was sent home early on health grounds. Determined to make amends for this perceived personal failure, he returned to Antarctica in 1907 as leader of the Nimrod Expedition. In January 1909 he and three companions made a southern march which established a record Farthest South latitude at 88°23'S, 97 geographical miles (114 statute miles, 190 km) from the South Pole, by far the closest convergence in exploration history up to that time. For this achievement, Shackleton was knighted by King Edward VII on his return home. After the race to the South Pole ended in 1912 with Roald Amundsen's conquest, Shackleton turned his attention to what he said was the one remaining great object of Antarctic journeying—the crossing of the continent from sea to sea, via the pole. To this end he made preparations for what became the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, 1914–17. Disaster struck this expedition when its ship, Endurance, was trapped in pack ice and slowly crushed, before the shore parties could be landed. There followed a sequence of exploits, and an ultimate escape with no lives lost, that would eventually assure Shackleton's heroic status, although this was not immediately evident.[1] In 1921 he went back to the Antarctic with the Shackleton-Rowett Expedition, intending to carry out a programme of scientific and survey activities. Before the expedition could begin this work Shackleton died of a heart attack while his ship, Quest, was moored in South Georgia. At his wife's request he was buried there. Away from his expeditions, Shackleton's life was generally restless and unfulfilled. In his search for rapid pathways to wealth and security he launched many business ventures and other money-making schemes, none of which prospered. His financial affairs were generally muddled; when he died, he owed over £40,000 (more than £1.5 million in 2008 terms).[2] On 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. At the end of the 20th century Shackleton was "rediscovered",[3] and rapidly became a cult figure, a role model for leadership as one who, in extreme circumstances, kept his team together to accomplish a survival story which polar historian Stephanie Barczewski describes as "incredible".[4] Ernest Shackleton was born on 15 February 1874, in Kilkea near Athy, County Kildare, Ireland, about 30 miles (48 km) from Dublin. Ernest's father, Henry, and mother, born Henrietta Letitia Sophia Gavan, were of Anglo-Irish ancestry.[5] Ernest was the second of their ten children and the first of two sons; the second, Frank, would achieve notoriety as a suspect, later exonerated, in the 1907 theft of Ireland's Crown Jewels.[6] In 1880, when Ernest was six, Henry Shackleton gave up his life as a landowner to study medicine at Trinity College, Dublin, moving his family into the city.[7] Four years later, the family moved again, from Ireland to Sydenham in suburban London. Partly this was in search of better professional prospects for the newly qualified doctor, but another factor may have been unease about their Anglo-Irish ancestry, following the assassination by Irish nationalists of Lord Frederick Cavendish, the British Chief Secretary for Ireland, in 1882.[7] From early childhood Shackleton was a voracious reader, which sparked a passion for adventure.[8] He was schooled by a governess until the age of 11, when he began at Fir Lodge Preparatory School in West Hill, Dulwich. At 13 he entered Dulwich College, a leading public school for boys.[7] The young Shackleton did not distinguish himself as a scholar, and was reputedly said to be "bored" by his studies.[7] 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 [their pupils'] taste for poetry for all time by making it a task and an imposition."[7] In his final term at the school, however, he was able to achieve fifth place in his class of thirty-one.[9] Shackleton's restlessness at school was such that he was allowed to leave at 16 and go to sea.[10] The options available were a Royal Naval cadetship at HMS Britannia, which Dr Shackleton could not afford, the mercantile marine cadet ships Worcester and Conway, or an apprenticeship "before the mast" on a sailing vessel. This third option was chosen.[10] His father was able to secure him a berth with the North Western Shipping Company, aboard the square-rigged sailing ship Hoghton Tower.[10] During the following four years at sea, Shackleton learned his trade, visiting the far corners of the earth and forming acquaintances with a variety of people from many walks of life, learning to be at home with all kinds of men.[11] 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.[11] Two years later he had obtained his First Mate's ticket, and in 1898 he was certified as a Master Mariner, which qualified him to command a British ship anywhere in the world.[11] In 1898 Shackleton joined the Union-Castle Line, the regular mail and passenger carrier between Southampton and Cape Town. He was, as a shipmate recorded, "a departure from our usual type of young officer", content with his own company though not aloof, "spouting lines from Keats and Browning", a mixture of sensitivity and aggression but withal, sympathetic.[12] Following the outbreak of the Boer War in 1899, Shackleton transferred to the troopship Tintagel Castle where, in March 1900, he met an army lieutenant, Cedric Longstaff, whose father Llewellyn Longstaff was the main financial backer of the National Antarctic Expedition, then being organised in London.[13] Shackleton used his acquaintance with the son to obtain an interview with Longstaff senior, with a view to obtaining a place on the expedition. Longstaff, impressed by Shackleton's keenness, recommended him to Sir Clements Markham, the expedition's overlord, making it clear that he wanted Shackleton accepted.[13] On 17 February 1901 his appointment as third officer to the expedition's ship Discovery was confirmed; shortly afterwards he was commissioned a sub-lieutenant in the Royal Naval Reserve.[14] Although officially he was given leave by Union-Castle, this was in fact the end of Shackleton's Merchant Navy service.[13] The 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. It was led by Robert Falcon Scott, a Royal Navy torpedo lieutenant lately promoted Commander,[15] and had objectives that included scientific and geographical discovery.[16] Although Discovery was not a Royal Navy unit, Scott required the crew, officers and scientific staff to accept voluntarily the conditions of the Naval Discipline Act, and the ship and expedition were run on Royal Navy lines.[17] Shackleton accepted this, even though his own background and instincts favoured a different, more informal style of leadership.[18] Shackleton's particular duties were listed as: "In charge of seawater analysis. Ward-room caterer. In charge of holds, stores and provisions [...] He also arranges the entertainments".[19] Discovery departed London on 31 July 1901, arriving at the Antarctic coast, via Cape Town and New Zealand, on 8 January 1902. After landing, Shackleton took part in an experimental balloon flight on 4 February.[20] He also participated, with the scientists Edward Wilson and Hartley 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.[21] During the Antarctic winter of 1902, in the confines of the iced-in Discovery, Shackleton edited the expedition's magazine The South Polar Times.[22] According to steward Clarence Hare, he was "the most popular of the officers among the crew, being a good mixer",[23] though claims that this represented an unofficial rival leadership to Scott's are unsupported.[24] 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 march 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.[24][25] The party set out on 2 November 1902. The march was, Scott wrote later, "a combination of success and failure".[26] A record Farthest South latitude of 82°17' was reached, beating the previous record established in 1900 by Carsten Borchgrevink.[27] The journey was marred by the poor performance of the dogs, whose food had become tainted, and who rapidly fell sick.[28] 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.[29] He would later strongly refute Scott's claims in The Voyage of the Discovery, that he had been carried on the sledge.[30] However, he was in a seriously weakened condition; Wilson's diary entry for 14 January 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 that need not be detailed here but which are of no small consequence one hundred and sixty miles from the ship". On 4 February 1903 the party finally reached the ship. After a medical examination (which proved inconclusive),[31] Scott decided to send Shackleton home on the relief ship Morning, which had arrived in McMurdo Sound in January 1903. Scott wrote: "He ought not to risk further hardship in his present state of health."[31] There is conjecture that Scott's motives for removing him was resentment of Shackleton's popularity, and that ill-health was used as an excuse to get rid of him.[32] Years after the deaths of Scott, Wilson and Shackleton, Albert Armitage, the expedition's second-in-command, claimed that there had been a falling-out on the southern journey, and that Scott had told the ship's doctor that "if he does not go back sick he will go back in disgrace."[31] There is no corroboration of Armitage's story. Shackleton and Scott stayed on friendly terms, at least until the publication of Scott's account of the southern journey in The Voyage of the Discovery.[30] Although in public they remained mutually respectful and cordial,[33] 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".[30]