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Ernest Shackleton 1874 - 1922

Ernest Henry Shackleton was born on February 15, 1874 in Kilkea, County Kildare Ireland, and died at age 47 years old on January 5, 1922 at South Georgia Island in South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.

Ernest Henry Shackleton

Ernest Henry Shackleton CVO OBE FRGS FRSGS

February 15, 1874

Kilkea, County Kildare, Ireland

January 5, 1922

South Georgia Island in , SIQQ 1ZZ, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands

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Ernest Henry Shackleton's History: 1874 - 1922

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Introduction

Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton CVO OBE FRGS FRSGS was an Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic. He was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. Movies: South Ships: Endurance, RRS Discovery, Nimrod, Quest
02/15

1874

Birthday

February 15, 1874

Birthdate

Kilkea, County Kildare Ireland

Birthplace

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Nationality & Locations

Irish. Ireland and London, England.
Military Service

Merchant Navy officer Shackleton in 1901, at the age of 27 Shackleton's restlessness at school was such that he was allowed to leave at 16 and go to sea.[9] The options available were a Royal Navy cadetship at Britannia, which Shackleton could not afford; the mercantile marine cadet ships Worcester and Conway; or an apprenticeship "before the mast" on a sailing vessel. The third option was chosen.[9] His father was able to secure him a berth with the North Western Shipping Company, aboard the square-rigged sailing ship Hoghton Tower.[9] 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.[10] 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.[10] Two years later, he had obtained his first mate's ticket, and in 1898, he was certified as a master mariner, qualifying him to command a British ship anywhere in the world.[10] In 1898, Shackleton joined 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.[11] 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 W. Longstaff was the main financial backer of the National Antarctic Expedition then being organised in London.[12] 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.[12] On 17 February 1901, his appointment as third officer to the expedition's ship Discovery was confirmed; on 4 June he was commissioned into the Royal Navy, with the rank of sub-lieutenant in the Royal Naval Reserve.[13][14] Although officially on leave from Union-Castle, this was in fact the end of Shackleton's Merchant Navy service.[12]
01/5

1922

Death

January 5, 1922

Death date

Heart Attack.

Cause of death

South Georgia Island in SIQQ 1ZZ, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands
Death location

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Obituary

On 4 January, 1922, the ‘Quest’ reached South Georgia and cast anchor off the Grytviken whaling station. Sir Ernest Shackleton visited old friends at the whaling station and organised preparations for the expedition. He returned to the ‘Quest’ that evening in good cheer. He wrote the following words in his diary, that were to be his last: At last, after sixteen days of turmoil and anxiety, on a peaceful sunshiny day, we came to anchor in Grytviken. How familiar the coast seemed as we passed down: we saw with full interest the places we struggled over after the boat journey. Now we must speed all we can, but the prospect is not too bright, for labour is scarce. The old familiar smell of dead whale permeates everything. It is a strange and curious place. Douglas and Wilkins are at different ends of the island. A wonderful evening. In the darkening twilight I saw a lone star hover Gem-like above the bay. Dr Alexander Macklin was on the anchor watch from 2-4am that night. On hearing a whistle from Shackleton’s cabin, he went to investigate. Macklin himself reported that Shackleton greeting him thus: Hullo, Mack, boy, is that you? I thought it was.’ He continued: ’I can’t sleep to-night, can you get me a sleeping draught? Shackleton had complained of severe facial neuralgia. He had taken aspirin but said that it was ‘no good’ and asked Macklin: ‘will you get me something which will act?’ Macklin attended to Shackleton’s need for some further blankets. Despite telling Macklin not to bother, Shackleton didn’t put up too much of a fuss. Macklin wrote that the Boss ‘talked of many things quite rationally’ and so he took the ‘opportunity to emphasize the necessity of his taking things very much more quietly than he had been doing’. It is hard to imagine Shackleton’s response was in anything other than a light-hearted jest: ‘You are always wanting me to give up something. What do you want me to give up now?’ Shackleton then suffered an attack of angina pectoris. Macklin stayed with Shackleton for the worst of the attack and then went to wake Dr Ilroy and Leonard Hussey. Despite their presence, Shackleton died rather suddenly. As Macklin wrote: ‘Nothing could be done, however. I noted the time—it was about 2.50 a.m.’ Robert Hugh Mill wrote of Shackleton’s death: A fine, a characteristic end, without warning, without regret. Life stopped in the course of a new onward movement. All his life had been a rattling rush of swift succeeding action, like a chain cable racing through the hawse-pipe into an unfathomed sea, causing the world to vibrate as it ran out its full length of forty-seven shackles when the last link slipped over, and there was silence. The two doctors woke Frank Wild at about 3am. Being roused at such an hour, it took a moment for the significance of the news to occur to Wild. He wrote that it was a ‘It was a staggering blow’. He called for Frank Worsley and informed him of Shackleton’s death. At 8am that morning, Wild gathered all hands together to tell them the news. He later wrote: ‘Naturally it was a great shock to them all, especially to those who had served with him before and thus knew him more intimately.’ Frank Wild then engaged in the necessary tasks brought up by the death of the Boss. He was busy with arranging communications to Emily, Lady Shackleton, and John Quiller Rowett, the ‘Quest’ expedition’s financial backer. Wild went ashore and visited Jacobsen, the manager of the whaling station at Grytviken. The manager, ‘an old friend of ours’ as Wild wrote, had been with Shackleton the previous afternoon and was shocked by the news. He assisted Wild in the jobs that needed to be done. The doctors of Grytviken embalmed the body and a coffin was made by Mr. Hansen of nearby Leith. When all the necessary arrangements had been made, the coffin was brought ashore. As Wild wrote: All hands mustered quietly and stood bareheaded as we lifted the coffin, covered by our silk white ensign, to the side of the Quest, and passed it over into a motor launch. All the time the rain soaked heavily down. From the pier we carried him to the little hospital and placed him in the room in which we had lived together seven years before.

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Ernest Shackleton lived 29 years shorter than the average family member when died at the age of 47.

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Amanda S. Stevenson

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Ernest Shackleton

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Amanda S. Stevenson

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Ernest Shackleton

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Amanda S. Stevenson

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Ernest Shackleton

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Amanda S. Stevenson

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Ernest Shackleton

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Amanda S. Stevenson

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Ernest Shackleford

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Ernest Shackleton

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Amanda S. Stevenson

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11/02/2020

Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton CVO OBE FRGS FRSGS (/ˈʃækəltən/; 15 February 1874 – 5 January 1922) was an Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic. He was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.

Shackleton's first experience of the polar regions was as third officer on Captain Robert Falcon Scott's Discovery expedition of 1901–1904, from which he was sent home early on health grounds, after he and his companions Scott and Edward Adrian Wilson set a new southern record by marching to latitude 82°S. During the Nimrod expedition of 1907–1909, he and three companions established a new record Farthest South latitude at 88°S, only 97 geographical miles (112 statute miles or 180 kilometres) from the South Pole, the largest advance to the pole in exploration history. Also, members of his team climbed Mount Erebus, the most active Antarctic volcano. For these achievements, Shackleton was knighted by King Edward VII on his return home.

After the race to the South Pole ended in December 1911, with Roald Amundsen's conquest, Shackleton turned his attention to the crossing of Antarctica from sea to sea, via the pole. To this end, he made preparations for what became the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, 1914–1917. Disaster struck this expedition when its ship, Endurance, became trapped in pack ice and was slowly crushed before the shore parties could be landed. The crew escaped by camping on the sea ice until it disintegrated, then by launching the lifeboats to reach Elephant Island and ultimately South Georgia Island, a stormy ocean voyage of 720 nautical miles (1,330 km; 830 mi) and Shackleton's most famous exploit. In 1921, he returned to the Antarctic with the Shackleton–Rowett Expedition, but died of a heart attack while his ship 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 business ventures which failed to prosper, and he died heavily in debt. Upon 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. Later in the 20th century, Shackleton was "rediscovered".[1] He rapidly became a role model for leadership as one who, in extreme circumstances, kept his team together in a survival story described by cultural historian Stephanie Barczewski as "incredible".[2]

In his 1956 address to the British Science Association, Sir Raymond Priestley, one of his contemporaries, said "Scott for scientific method, Amundsen for speed and efficiency but when disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton", paraphrasing what Apsley Cherry-Garrard had written in a preface to his 1922 memoir The Worst Journey in the World. In 2002, Shackleton was voted eleventh in a BBC poll of the 100 Greatest Britons.

Blue plaque marking the home of Ernest Shackleton at 12 Westwood Hill, Sydenham, London Borough of Lewisham
Shackleton was born on 15 February 1874, in Kilkea, County Kildare, Ireland. His father, Henry Shackleton, tried to enter the army, but his poor health prevented him from doing so. He became a farmer instead, settling in Kilkea. The Shackleton family are of English origin, specifically from Yorkshire. Abraham Shackleton, an English Quaker, moved to Ireland in 1726 and started a school at Ballitore, County Kildare. Shackleton's mother, Henrietta Letitia Sophia Gavan, was descended from the Fitzmaurice family.[3] Ernest was the second of their ten children and the first of two sons; the second, Frank, achieved notoriety as a suspect, later exonerated, in the 1907 theft of the Irish Crown Jewels.[4]

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 to the city.[5] 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 Secretary for Ireland, in 1882.[5] However, Shackleton took lifelong pride in his Irish roots, and frequently declared, "I am an Irishman".[6]

Education
From early childhood, Shackleton was a voracious reader, a pursuit which sparked a passion for adventure.[7] He 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. At the age of thirteen, he entered Dulwich College.[5] The young Shackleton did not particularly distinguish himself as a scholar, and was said to be "bored" by his studies.[5]

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."[5] In his final term at the school he was still able to achieve fifth place in his class of thirty-one.[8]

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