Shackleton’s Endurance
The history of The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914-1917)
Ernest Shackleton before 1909
Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton (born 15th February 1874, died 5th January 1922) was an Irish-born British polar explorer involved in four pioneering expeditions to the Antarctic in the 1900s, during what became known as The Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. His first trip to the inhospitable region was as a junior member of Captain Falcon Scott’s Discovery Expedition (1901–1904), during which he, Scott and Edward Wilson set a new southern record by sledging to 82°S; eight degrees short of the geographic South Pole. However, Shackleton was forced to leave the expedition early, in 1903, following a ‘physical collapse’. It left him with a sense of failure and determined to return to the hostile polar conditions to prove he could tolerate them.
Four years later, in 1907, Shackleton organised the first of what would be three of his own Antarctic expeditions. He named it The Nimrod Expedition and although it was privately funded it was also called The British Antarctic Expedition. The aim was to reach the South Pole. Although it failed to do so, Shackleton and three others achieved a new ‘farthest south’ record: reaching 88° 23 on 9th January 1909 – just 112 miles short of their goal. The photograph taken to commemorate the event did not feature the leader. Shackleton took the photograph himself. Nevertheless, the feat led to him becoming a hero in the eyes of the British public and ‘Sir Ernest’, when King Edward VII knighted him in December 1909.
Nimrod Expedition (1907-09) to the Antarctic, led by Ernest Shackleton
Endurance under full sail (Photo from Frank Hurley State Library NSW)
Shackleton had left an indelible mark in the Antarctic and two years later, when the Norwegian polar explorer, Roald Amundsen, became the first to reach the South Pole on 14th December 1911 he had this to say: “Sir Ernest Shackleton’s name will always be written in the annals of Antarctic exploration in letters of fire”.
In December 1913, Shackleton was again back in the news when he revealed details of his second expedition to Antarctica. Grandly titled, The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, its aim was to make the first overland crossing of the Antarctic continent. Two ships would be used to transport a team of 56 men to the Weddell Sea in the Antarctic, from where they would trek across the ice. The ships chosen for the expedition were the Scottish-built steam yacht, Aurora, and the three-masted sailing barquentine, Endurance, which also had a coal-powered steam engine.
Built in Norway and launched on 17th December 1912, she was initially named Polaris and was specifically designed for operating in pack ice.
Shackleton bought her in January 1914 after her original owners got into financial difficulty.
Sir Ernest paid £14,000 for Polaris, changed her name to Endurance, in recognition of his family motto, Fortitudine Vincimus (Through endurance we conquer), and declared she would carry him and his main party of 26 men and one cat to Antarctica. Also onboard would be 69 dogs, each weighing around 100lbs, who would pull the expeditions sledges across the ice. Aurora would carry the remaining 27 men, serving as back-up to Shackleton’s team.
The expedition caught the imagination of the British public and was largely privately funded, by donations raised mostly by Shackleton himself. The British government put in £10,000 and the largest single private investor was a Scottish jute magnate, Sir James Caird, from Dundee, who put up £24,000. One of Endurance’s three lifeboats was named in his honour, The James Caird. At 22-feet long, it would play a vital part in the drama that would later befall the expedition and its illustrious leader.
Continue the history of Shackleton's Endurance
Discover the fate of Shackleton’s Endurance and her crew in Antarctica…
