Biography
L I F E

All images © Various.

Sir Ernest Shackleton Dvds @ amazon.com (direct link)

Sir Ernest Shackleton Biography Books @ amazon.com (direct link)

Explorer

Date of birth:
15 February 1874
Kilkea, County Kildare, Ireland

Birth name:
Ernest Henry Shackleton

Spouse:
Emily Mary Dorman (1904 - 5 January 1922) (his death) 3 children

Date of death:
5 January 1922
Grytviken, South Georgia

FACTS

Sir Ernest Shackleton's name will
for evermore be engraved with letters
of fire in the history of Antarctic
exploration.

ROALD AMUNDSEN

Ernest Shackleton was the quintessential Edwardian hero. A contemporary - and adversity - of Scott, he sailed on the Discovery expedition of 1900, and went on to mount three expeditions of his own. Like Scott, he was a social adventurer: snow and ice held no particular attraction for him, but the pursuit of wealth, fame and power did. Yet Shackleton, an Anglo-Irishman who left school at 16, needed status to raise money for his own expeditions. At various times he was involved in journalism, politics, manufacturing and City fortune-hunting - none of them very effectively. A frustrated poet, he was never to be successful with money, but he did succeed in marrying it.

At his height he was feted as a national hero, knighted by Edward VII, and granted £20,000 by the government for achievements which were, and remain, the very stuff of legend. But the world to which he returned in 1917 after the sensational Endurance expedition did not seem to welcome surviving heroes. Poverty-stricken by the end of the war, he had to pay off his debts through writing and endless lecturing. He finally obtained funds for another expedition, but died of a heart attack, aged only 47, as it reached South Georgia.

From the excellent biography, Shackleton, by Roland Huntford, available at amazon.co.uk

IN-DEPTH

In 1884, immediately after qualifying Dr Shackleton crossed the water to settle in England for good. His first practice, at South Croydon, was a failure, so after six months he moved to Sydenham. There he held his own, and there he stayed. It was in Suburban London, therefore, that Ernest Shackleton passed the remainder of his boyhood. From 1887, he attended Dulwich College.

At the bequest of his wife, Emily, he was buried in Grytviken, South Georgia, in the Norwegian cemetery, along with the whalers from that country who made this desolate spot home. They were the outcasts of the sea, amongst whom he felt at home.