69 Facts About Ernest Shackleton

Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton was an Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic.

Ernest Shackleton was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.

On returning home, Ernest Shackleton was knighted for his achievements by King Edward VII.

Away from his expeditions, Ernest Shackleton's life was generally restless and unfulfilled.

Later in the 20th century, Ernest Shackleton was "rediscovered", and he became a role model for leadership in extreme circumstances.

In 2002, Ernest Shackleton was voted eleventh in a BBC poll of the 100 Greatest Britons.

Ernest Shackleton was born on 15 February 1874, in Kilkea, County Kildare, Ireland.

The Ernest Shackleton family are of English origin, specifically from West Yorkshire.

Ernest Shackleton's father was descended from Abraham Ernest Shackleton, an English Quaker who moved to Ireland in 1726 and started a school in Ballitore, County Kildare.

Ernest Shackleton 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 Shackleton was six, his father gave up his life as a landowner to study medicine at Trinity College Dublin, moving his family to the city.

However, Ernest Shackleton took lifelong pride in his Irish roots and frequently declared that he was "an Irishman".

From early childhood, Ernest Shackleton was a voracious reader, a pursuit which sparked in him a passion for adventure.

Ernest Shackleton 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.

One option was a Royal Navy officer cadetship in the Britannia at Dartmouth, but this was too expensive, and Ernest Shackleton passed the upper age limit of fourteen and a half in 1888.

Ernest Shackleton's father was able to secure him a berth with the North Western Shipping Company, aboard the square-rigged sailing ship Hoghton Tower.

One of his shipmates recorded that Ernest 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.

Ernest Shackleton used his acquaintance with the son to obtain an interview with Longstaff senior, with a view to obtaining a place on the expedition.

Ernest Shackleton accepted this approach, even though his own background and instincts favoured a different, more informal style of leadership.

Ernest Shackleton 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.

Ernest Shackleton later denied Scott's claim in The Voyage of the Discovery, that he had been carried on the sledge.

Ernest Shackleton assisted in the equipping of the Argentine Uruguay, which was being fitted out for the relief of the stranded Swedish Antarctic Expedition under Otto Nordenskjold.

In search of more permanent employment in 1903, Ernest Shackleton applied for a regular commission in the Royal Navy via the back-door route of the Supplementary List.

In 1905, Ernest Shackleton became a shareholder in a speculative company that aimed to make a fortune transporting Russian troops home from the Far East.

Ernest Shackleton ventured into politics, unsuccessfully standing in the 1906 General Election as the Liberal Unionist Party's candidate for Dundee constituency in opposition to Irish Home Rule.

Ernest Shackleton was, by this time, making no secret of his ambition to return to Antarctica at the head of his own expedition.

Beardmore was sufficiently impressed with Ernest Shackleton to offer financial support, but other donations proved hard to come by.

Nevertheless, in February 1907, Ernest Shackleton presented to the Royal Geographical Society his plans for an Antarctic expedition, the details of which, under the name British Antarctic Expedition, were published in the RGS newsletter, Geographical Journal.

On 4 August 1907, Ernest Shackleton was appointed a Member of the Royal Victorian Order, 4th Class.

Ernest Shackleton had originally planned to use the old Discovery base in McMurdo Sound to launch his attempts on the South Pole and South Magnetic Pole, but before leaving England, he had been pressured into giving Scott an undertaking not to base himself in the McMurdo area, which Scott was claiming as his own field of work.

At one point, Ernest Shackleton gave his one biscuit allotted for the day to the ailing Frank Wild, who 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".

Ernest Shackleton returned to the United Kingdom as a hero, and soon afterwards published his account of the expedition, The Heart of the Antarctic.

In 1910, Ernest Shackleton made a series of three recordings using an Edison phonograph, in which he briefly described the expedition.

Ernest Shackleton was appointed a Younger Brother of Trinity House, a significant honour for British mariners.

Ernest Shackleton then sought to cash in on his celebrity by making a fortune in the world of business.

Ernest Shackleton's mind turned to a project that had been announced, and then abandoned, by the British explorer William Speirs Bruce, for a continental crossing via the South Pole, starting from a landing point in the Weddell Sea and ending in McMurdo Sound.

Bruce had failed to acquire financial backing, and was happy for Ernest Shackleton to adopt his plans, which were similar to those being followed by the German explorer Wilhelm Filchner who had left Bremerhaven in May 1911; in December 1912, the news arrived from South Georgia that Filchner's expedition had failed.

In December 1913, Ernest Shackleton published details of his new expedition, grandly titled the "Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition".

Two ships were to be employed: Endurance would carry the main party into the Weddell Sea, aiming for Vahsel Bay from where a team of six, led by Ernest Shackleton, would begin the crossing of the continent; meanwhile, a second ship, the Aurora, would take a supporting party under Captain Aeneas Mackintosh to McMurdo Sound on the far side of the continent.

Physicist Reginald James was asked if he could sing; others were accepted on sight because Ernest Shackleton liked the look of them, or after the briefest of interrogations.

Ernest Shackleton loosened some of the traditional hierarchies to promote camaraderie, such as distributing the ship's chores equally among officers, scientists and able seamen.

Ernest Shackleton made a point of socialising with his crew members every evening after dinner, leading sing-alongs, jokes and games.

Ernest Shackleton finally selected a crew of fifty-six; shared equally, twenty-eight men on each ship.

Perce Blackborow was a nineteen-year-old Welsh sailor who had stowed away on the ship after being refused a job; although angered by this, Ernest Shackleton realised it was too late to turn back by the time the situation was discovered, so Blackborow was allowed to join the crew and assigned to the ship's galley.

Rescue by means of a chance discovery was very unlikely, so Ernest Shackleton decided to risk an open-boat journey to the South Georgia whaling stations where he knew help would be available.

Ernest Shackleton chose five companions for the journey: the ship's captain Frank Worsley, who would be responsible for navigation; Tom Crean, who had "begged to go"; two strong sailors in John Vincent and Timothy McCarthy; and McNish.

Ernest Shackleton insisted on packing only enough supplies to last for four weeks, knowing that if they failed to reach South Georgia within that time, the boat and its crew would be lost.

Rather than risking another sea journey to reach the whaling stations on the northern coast, Ernest Shackleton decided to attempt a land crossing of the island.

Ernest Shackleton immediately sent a boat to pick up the three men from the other side of South Georgia Island, while he set to work organising the rescue of those left behind on Elephant Island.

Ernest Shackleton appealed to the Chilean government and was offered the use of the Yelcho, a small seagoing tug from the Chilean Navy.

Ernest Shackleton travelled there to join Aurora, and sailed with her to rescue the Ross Sea party which, despite many hardships, had successfully completed its depot-laying mission.

Europe was in the midst of the First World War when Ernest Shackleton returned to England in May 1917.

Ernest Shackleton repeatedly requested posting to the front in France, and was by now drinking heavily.

In October 1917, Ernest Shackleton was sent to Buenos Aires to boost British propaganda in South America.

Ernest Shackleton was then briefly involved in a mission to Spitzbergen, to establish a British presence there under the guise of a mining operation.

Ernest Shackleton was then appointed to a military expedition to Murmansk, which obliged him to return home again before departing for northern Russia.

Ernest Shackleton was finally discharged from the army in October 1919, retaining his rank of major.

Ernest Shackleton returned to the lecture circuit and in December 1919 he published his own account of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, titled South.

Ernest Shackleton thought seriously of going to the Beaufort Sea area of the Arctic, a largely unexplored region, and raised some interest in this idea from the Canadian government.

Lady Ernest Shackleton died in 1936, having survived her husband by fourteen years.

In June 2024, wreck hunters found Quest, the vessel on which Ernest Shackleton made his final voyage.

Ernest Shackleton was found on the seafloor off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada by a team led by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.

Ernest Shackleton's death marked the end of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, a period of discovery characterised by journeys of geographical and scientific exploration in a largely unknown continent without any of the benefits of modern travel methods or radio communication.

In 2002, in a BBC poll conducted to determine the "100 Greatest Britons", Ernest Shackleton was ranked 11th while Scott was down in 54th place.

In 1983, the BBC produced a four-part miniseries, Ernest Shackleton, starring David Schofield in the title role and David Rodigan as Frank Wild.

Ernest Shackleton appeared in the first episode of the 1985 Central Television serial The Last Place on Earth, in which he was portrayed by James Aubrey.

Ernest Shackleton featured on a series of UK postage stamps issued by the Royal Mail in January 2016 to mark the centenary of the Endurance expedition.

The musical play Ernest Shackleton Loves Me by Val Vigoda and Joe DiPietro made its debut in 2017 at the Tony Kiser Theater, an off-Broadway venue in New York City.

In February 2024 a memorial plaque to Ernest Shackleton sculpted by Will Davies was unveiled in the south cloister of Westminster Abbey by Anne, Princess Royal.