Question 1

His ship was crushed by ice before he even landed. Every goal of the expedition was lost in the first four months. So why is this the most admired polar journey ever made?

Accepted Answer

Because after that, with no ship, no radio and no chance of rescue, he kept twenty-seven men alive on drifting ice for twenty months — then sailed a lifeboat 1,300 kilometres across the worst sea on Earth to fetch help, and went back four times until every single one of them was off the ice.

Question 2

Ernest Shackleton: what happened in 9 January 1909?

Accepted Answer

156 km short, and he turns back — Closer to the South Pole than anyone had ever been, and out of food. He turns round. "Better a live donkey than a dead lion," he tells his wife afterwards.

Question 3

Ernest Shackleton: what happened in 19 January 1915?

Accepted Answer

Frozen fast — The ship is beset in the Weddell pack, one day's sail from the coast she was meant to land on. She never moves under her own power again.

Question 4

Ernest Shackleton: what happened in 21 November 1915?

Accepted Answer

The Endurance sinks — Ten months of ice pressure finally open her hull. The crew watch her go down from the floe. "She's gone, boys," Shackleton says, and turns to the problem of the next meal.

Question 5

Ernest Shackleton: what happened in 24 April – 10 May 1916?

Accepted Answer

The James Caird — Six men, a 7-metre lifeboat, 1,300 km of the Southern Ocean. Worsley gets four sextant sightings in sixteen days of storm and hits an island 40 km wide. Missing it meant open sea to Africa.

Question 6

Ernest Shackleton: what happened in 19–20 May 1916?

Accepted Answer

Across South Georgia — They land on the wrong side. Three of them cross thirty-six hours of unmapped glaciers and peaks, with screws in their boot soles for grip, and walk into a whaling station.

Question 7

Ernest Shackleton: what happened in 30 August 1916?

Accepted Answer

All twenty-two off the ice — Three rescue attempts fail in the pack ice. The fourth, in a small Chilean tug called the Yelcho, gets through. He counts them from the deck. Twenty-two. Nobody lost.

Ernest Shackleton — Antarctic · 1914 · nobody died · Great Explorers

Keep exploring

Other languages