{ "date": [ { "century": [ "19" ], "role": [ { "value": "birth and early career" } ], "description": [ { "value": "Ernest Henry Shackleton was born at Kilkea House, County Kildare, Ireland, on 15 February 1874. His father was an Anglo-Irish farmer, his mother Irish. His father soon abandoned farming to read medicine at Trinity College Dublin, qualifying in 1884. The same year, the family moved to England, quickly settling in Sydenham. Ernest was taught in turn by a governess, at Fir Lodge preparatory school, and from 1887 as a day boy at Dulwich College. In 1890, he left the school to join the merchant navy, beginning with an apprenticeship on the full-rigged ship Hoghton Tower. He passed for second mate in August 1894, and soon moved to the steamer Monmouthshire as third mate. He spent the next few years in tramp steamers, and gained his master's certificate in April 1898. The following year, he took a job with the Union Castle line of mail ships. He joined the Tintagel Castle, running troops to the Boer War, the same year, followed by spells as third officer in the Gaika and the Carisbrooke Castle. Whilst employed by Union Castle, he became a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS)." } ], "earliest": 1874, "value": "1874 - 1900", "latest": 1900 }, { "century": [ "20" ], "role": [ { "value": "the discovery expedition" } ], "description": [ { "value": "In 1901, Shackleton was given leave to join Captain Scott's British National Antarctic Expedition (the Discovery expedition), as a lieutenant. As the expedition was effectively a Naval one, Shackleton received a sub-lieutenant's commission in the Royal Naval Reserve (RNR) on 1 July 1901. On Discovery, he was given the job of measuring sea-water samples, and managing the stores and catering; on the expedition's arrival in its winter quarters off Ross Island at the head of McMurdo Sound, he was put in charge of sledging rations. During the Polar winter, Shackleton edited the 'South Polar Times', the typed publication produced to entertain the expedition. In the summer of 1902, Scott chose Shackleton and E. A. Wilson to form a three-man party to try and reach the South Pole. Setting out on 2 November, the group were rapidly handicapped by the collapse of their dogs, whose food had spoiled in the tropics; eventually, they had to haul the sledges themselves, frequently taking one forward and then returning for the other. Despite this, they marched across the Ross Ice Shelf to meet the Transantarctic Mountains at its southern edge, eventually setting a record for furthest south of 82\u00ba 17' south on 30 December - far short of their ambitions, but still 238 miles further than Borchgrevink's 1900 record. On the return, the party all developed scurvy; Shackleton's condition seems to have been aggravated by some underlying ailment and, once they reached the base on 3 February, after 93 days out and 960 miles travelled, Scott invalided him home on the relief ship Morning on 2 March 1903." } ], "earliest": 1901, "value": "1901 - 1903", "latest": 1903 }, { "century": [ "20" ], "role": [ { "value": "organising in britain" } ], "description": [ { "value": "On his return to Britain, Shackleton published an account of the southern journey, and assisted with fitting the Terra Nova out for the second Discovery relief expedition. In January 1904, he took up a post as secretary of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society in Edinburgh; in April that year he married Emily Dorman. He stood, unsuccessfully, as the Liberal Unionist candidate for parliament in the 1906 general election; the same year, he took up a new job as secretary of William Beardmore's Parkhead engineering works in Glasgow. Throughout the period he was trying to raise funds for his own expedition to Antarctica; Beardmore became the first major funder. Tensions seem to have grown between Shackleton and Scott over this period: they had disagreed on the southern journey, and Shackleton felt that Scott had slighted him in his account of the expedition; he also resented Scott's insistence that Shackleton should steer clear of the Discovery's old stomping ground in Victoria Land, McMurdo Sound and Ross Island, agreeing to it only reluctantly." } ], "earliest": 1903, "value": "1903 - 1907", "latest": 1907 }, { "century": [ "20" ], "role": [ { "value": "the nimrod expedition" } ], "description": [ { "value": "Following a period of frantic organisation, in which he acquired an old Norwegian seal-hunting ship and renamed her the Nimrod, Shackleton's British Antarctic Expedition left New Zealand on 1 January 1908, towed by a steamer to save coal. On reaching Antarctica, Shackleton realised that the site of his proposed base, the Bay of Whales on the Ross Ice Shelf, was inherently unstable; in the end, the only site he could practically use was on the shores of McMurdo Sound on Ross Island, breaking his promise to Scott. Having set up their hut near Cape Royds, the expedition began the work of exploration. A party of six made the first ascent of the 12,448 foot high Mount Erebus on Ross Island, the world's most southerly active volcano, reaching the summit on 10 March 1908. A three-man party reached the South Magnetic Pole on 16 January 1909. Most spectacularly of all, Shackleton, accompanied by Jameson Adams, Frank Wild and Eric Marshall, nearly reached the South Pole, famously turning back at 88\u00ba 23' south - less than 100 nautical miles from the Pole - after pioneering a route from the Ross Ice Shelf, up the Beardmore Glacier, and on to the Polar plateau. The party suffered badly from scurvy on the return journey, Shackleton again seeming more ill than others. He and Wild eventually reached shelter on 28 February 1909, returning to the Ross Ice Shelf for Marshall and Adams a few days later; the Nimrod departed McMurdo Sound almost immediately, on 4 March." } ], "earliest": 1907, "value": "1907 - 1909", "latest": 1909 }, { "century": [ "20" ], "role": [ { "value": "fame" } ], "description": [ { "value": "Shackleton dictated his account of the Nimrod expedition whilst returning from New Zealand. 'The Heart of the Antarctic' was published in October 1909, and helped make him a star; he was knighted in November 1909. The next year or so was spent on a punishing lecture tour, intended to pay off the expedition's debts; in the end, the bulk were paid by the government. Always keen to make money quickly, Shackleton was involved in several speculative and unsuccessful business ventures. Plans to return to the Antarctic were put on hold during Scott's Terra Nova expedition of 1910-1913, and suffered a severe blow when news reached Britain of Amundsen's successful journey to the South Pole in December 1911. But in December 1913, Shackleton announced plans for an expedition to cross Antarctica via the South Pole." } ], "earliest": 1909, "value": "1909 - 1914", "latest": 1914 }, { "century": [ "20" ], "role": [ { "value": "the endurance expedition" } ], "description": [ { "value": "Leaving Britain as the First World War was declared in August 1914, Shackleton travelled down to South Georgia in the Endurance; there, he was told that the pack ice was particularly bad that year, but continued into the Weddell Sea. Endurance was trapped in the ice on 18 January 1915; she drifted for 1300 miles and 282 days before being crushed on 21 November. The crew had moved onto the pack ice, where they camped and drifted for another 165 days before taking to the Endurance's three open boats and rowing for six days to reach the desolate and uninhabited Elephant Island. The majority stayed there, living on what they could hunt, in a low hut roofed with two of the boats, whilst Shackleton and five companions sailed the third boat, the James Caird, across 800 miles of the world's stormiest seas to reach South Georgia. Once there, Shackleton, Frank Worsley and Tom Crean walked almost non-stop for 36 hours without equipment across the mountainous island to reach the whaling station at Stromness and help on 20 May 1916. It took Shackleton four attempts before the Elephant Island party were finally rescued on 30 August. Meanwhile, a second party (the 'Ross Sea Party'), had travelled to McMurdo Sound in the Aurora to lay depots across the Ross Ice Shelf in the expectation that Shackleton would need them on his way from the South Pole. Left seriously short of supplies when the Aurora was blown away by a gale, they nevertheless laid their depots despite great hardship, and at the eventual cost of the lives of three of the party. Shackleton travelled to New Zealand to organise their rescue, arriving early in December 1916, signing on as a supernumerary officer on the Aurora under the command of John King Davis (an Antarctic veteran in his own right), and sailing on 20 December. They reached Ross Island on 10 January 1917; after days spent searching for two members of the Ross Sea Party who had been lost on the sea ice in McMurdo Sound, they left on 25 January." } ], "earliest": 1914, "value": "1914 - 1917", "latest": 1917 }, { "century": [ "20" ], "role": [ { "value": "war and peace" } ], "description": [ { "value": "Upon his return, Shackleton found the world had changed after two and a half years of war. At something of a loose end, he carried out propaganda work in South America, exploiting his fame as a result of the Endurance expedition. He then transferred to the army, and was gazetted a temporary major in July 1918. He served in the expeditionary force in north Russia, in charge of equipment for the campaign of winter 1918-1919, resigning his commission in February 1919. His account of the Endurance expedition, 'South', was published that year. Plans for an Arctic expedition fell through, and he began planning another Antarctic expedition." } ], "earliest": 1917, "value": "1917 - 1921", "latest": 1921 }, { "century": [ "20" ], "role": [ { "value": "the quest expedition and death" } ], "description": [ { "value": "Shackleton planned a long expedition charting the coast and islands of East Antarctica. Thanks largely to a donation from an old school fiend, John Rowett, he obtained an old seal-hunting ship and renamed her the Quest. She reached South Georgia on 4 January 1922; early the following morning, Shackleton died of a heart attack. His widow insisted that he be buried in the Antarctic, and he was interred on 5 March in the whaler's ceremony at Grytviken, South Georgia." } ], "earliest": 1921, "value": "1921 - 1922", "latest": 1922 }, { "century": [ "20" ], "role": [ { "value": "reputation" } ], "description": [ { "value": "Shackleton's personal and business lives were chaotic, and he had as many detractors as admirers, in part because of his disagreements with Scott. More recently, aided by revisionist historians in the 1970s and 1980s, he has come to be seen as an exemplary leader in adversity, a talent acknowledged by Apsley Cherry-Garrard: 'For a joint scientific and geographical piece of organization, give me Scott; for a Winter Journey, Wilson; for a dash to the Pole and nothing else, Amundsen: and if I am in the devil of a hole and want to get out of it, give me Shackleton every time. They will all go down in polar history as leaders, these men.' The Antarctic fish Artedidraco shackletoni and numerous places were named after Shackleton, including the Shackleton Icefalls on the Beardmore Glacier; the Shackleton Glacier, Shackleton Coast and Shackleton Inlet in the Transantarctic Mountains; the Shackleton Ice Shelf in Queen Mary Land; the Shackleton Range on the edge of the Filchner Ice Shelf, near where he planned to land in the Endurance expedition; Mount Shackleton in Graham Land; and the Shackleton Gap and Shackleton Valley in South Georgia." } ], "earliest": 1922, "value": "1922 - date", "latest": 1922 }, { "role": [ { "value": "date of birth" } ], "earliest": 1874, "value": "15 February 1874", "latest": 1874 }, { "role": [ { "value": "date of death" } ], "earliest": 1922, "value": "5 January 1922", "latest": 1922 }, { "role": [ { "value": "life dates" } ], "earliest": 1874, "value": "15 February 1874 - 5 January 1922", "latest": 1922 } ], "occupation": "explorer", "projects": [ "CollectionsPeopleStories" ], "gender": { 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