59 Fun Facts About Ernest Shackleton

A crater at the south pole of which world is named after Shackleton?

The Moon. Shackleton crater sits almost exactly on the lunar south pole, and because its floor never sees the Sun, scientists have probed it for frozen water.

In which Irish county was Shackleton born in 1874?

Kildare. Shackleton was born at Kilkea, near Athy, and although the family left Ireland for London when he was ten, he went on calling himself 'an Irishman' all his life.

Shackleton's brother Frank was a suspect, later exonerated, in which famous 1907 crime?

The theft of the Irish Crown Jewels. They vanished from a safe in Dublin Castle days before a royal visit; the inquiry cleared Frank, a herald there, and the jewels have never been recovered.

Which London school did Shackleton attend from the age of thirteen?

Dulwich College. Shackleton was said to be 'bored' by his lessons and usually sat low in the class lists, yet in his final term he came fifth of thirty-one.

How did Shackleton get his place on Scott's Discovery expedition?

Through the son of its main financial backer. Shackleton befriended Cedric Longstaff on a troopship bound for South Africa, then used him to win an interview with his father, who pressed the organisers to take him.

Which shipboard magazine did Shackleton edit during the Discovery expedition's first Antarctic winter?

South Polar Times. Shackleton typed each monthly issue himself while Edward Wilson painted its illustrations, and the magazine was revived for Scott's last expedition.

Which disease was blamed for Shackleton's collapse on the return from Scott's 1902 southern journey?

Scurvy. That was the diagnosis at the time, and Scott invalided him home; doctors rereading the records have since suspected a heart defect or a lack of vitamin B1 behind the breakdown.

On which relief ship did Scott send Shackleton home early from the Discovery expedition in 1903?

Morning. Scott wrote that it was 'a great blow to poor Shackleton', but ruled he 'ought not to risk further hardships'; he sailed home in March 1903 while Discovery stayed in the ice another year.

Which post did Shackleton take up in January 1904?

Secretary of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society. Shackleton had tried magazine journalism in London and found it unsatisfying, so he moved to Edinburgh for the post and married Emily Dorman three months later.

For which constituency did Shackleton stand unsuccessfully as a Liberal Unionist in 1906?

Dundee. Though born in Ireland himself, Shackleton stood on a platform opposing Irish Home Rule, and the voters placed him fourth of five candidates.

Which Clydeside industrialist backed the Nimrod expedition, and had a glacier named after him?

William Beardmore. Shackleton was working for the Glasgow shipbuilder when he planned the expedition, and the glacier he named for his patron became the party's road up to the polar plateau.

Which promise to Scott did Shackleton break in 1908?

Not to base himself in McMurdo Sound. Scott claimed the area as his own field of work, but ice barred every other landing Shackleton tried, and with coal running low he turned for his rival's old ground.

Which Antarctic inlet, named by Shackleton in 1908, became the base of the first party to reach the South Pole?

The Bay of Whales. Shackleton named it for the whales spouting on every side, then judged the floating ice too risky to winter on; three years later his Norwegian rival took the gamble and won.

How close to the South Pole did Shackleton get before turning back in January 1909?

97 nautical miles. 'We have shot our bolt', he wrote: rations had been cut again and again, and going on meant starving on the way back, so the four planted the flag and turned for home.

Which ailing companion got Shackleton's one daily biscuit on the return from Farthest South?

Frank Wild. Sick with dysentery and able to eat little but biscuit, he had Shackleton's own ration pressed on him, and wrote that no amount of money could have bought it.

Which Antarctic volcano did members of the Nimrod expedition make the first ascent of?

Mount Erebus. A party from the hut stood at the edge of its active crater on 10 March 1908, and their account of the climb opens the first book written and printed in Antarctica.

Having turned back short of the Pole, Shackleton told his wife that which live animal was better than a dead lion?

Donkey. The Bible's proverb says a living dog is better than a dead lion; Shackleton cast himself as the donkey, and Emily replied, 'Yes darling, as far as I am concerned.'

What was dug out from under the Nimrod hut in 2010, a century after being left behind?

Cases of whisky and brandy. Conservators cut them out of the ice, three crates of Mackinlay's Scotch and two of brandy; the distiller analysed the whisky and sold a recreated blend, with a share going to the trust that recovered them.

Which piece of new technology did Shackleton take to Antarctica on Nimrod in 1907?

A motor car. The Arrol-Johnston hauled sledges well on smooth sea ice near the hut, but its wheels sank in soft snow, so it never went onto the Barrier.

Shackleton gave expert evidence to which official inquiry in 1912?

The Titanic inquiry. Asked as an ice expert what he would have done, Shackleton said he would slow down, and told the court: 'You have no right to go at that speed in an ice zone.'

What was the goal of Shackleton's 1914 expedition aboard Endurance?

To cross Antarctica via the Pole. With the Pole itself already won, Shackleton called the 1,800-mile crossing the 'one great main object of Antarctic journeyings' left, yet he never even landed.

What is odd about the 'Men wanted for hazardous journey' advert credited to Shackleton?

No original has been found. Researchers have combed London newspaper archives without success, and the famous wording first turns up in a book published in 1944, 22 years after his death.

What was the name of the second ship of the 1914 expedition, sent to lay depots from the Ross Sea side?

Aurora. A gale tore her from her moorings and she drifted in the ice for more than six months, leaving the shore party marooned without proper supplies; they laid every depot regardless.

What unusual question did Shackleton put to the physicist Reginald James at interview?

Whether he could sing. When James looked puzzled, Shackleton explained that he didn't mean 'any Caruso stuff', only whether he could 'shout a bit with the boys': he prized temperament as highly as skill.

When war broke out in 1914 Shackleton offered Endurance to the Navy; which politician wired that the expedition should go on?

Winston Churchill. As First Lord of the Admiralty he thanked Shackleton for putting ship and men at the country's disposal, then told him the authorities wanted the expedition to carry on south.

Who captained the Endurance and later navigated the James Caird to South Georgia?

Frank Worsley. The New Zealander managed only a few sextant sightings of the sun between storms, hugging the mast as the boat pitched, yet he brought the six-man boat to a speck of land across the Southern Ocean.

How did Perce Blackborow come to be aboard Endurance?

He stowed away after being refused a job. Friends in the crew hid him in a locker until the ship was well out to sea, and Shackleton, stuck with him, signed him on as steward.

What was the name of the cat aboard Shackleton's ship Endurance?

Mrs Chippy. The tabby was in fact a tom, named for his owner, the carpenter Harry 'Chippy' McNish; once the ship was abandoned Shackleton had him shot, ruling that the party could not carry weaklings.

In which sea did the pack ice trap Endurance in January 1915?

Weddell Sea. The pack closed around Endurance short of her landing place and carried her helplessly north for ten months before the pressure finally crushed her.

Which instrument was the last thing saved from the sinking Endurance, kept by Shackleton as a 'mental tonic'?

A banjo. Each man could keep only two pounds of personal gear, but Shackleton ordered the meteorologist's twelve-pound instrument brought along, and its concerts 'did much to keep the men cheerful'.

What did Shackleton's men call their last camp on the drifting ice, their home for over three months?

Patience Camp. A march towards land went so slowly that Shackleton reckoned it 'would take us over three hundred days', so he halted on a solid floe and let the drift carry them north instead.

Shackleton renamed the ship Polaris as Endurance in honour of what?

His family motto. The Shackleton arms carried the Latin Fortitudine vincimus, 'By endurance we conquer', and he gave the name to a ship the ice would crush before she landed a single man.

After whom was the lifeboat James Caird named?

The expedition's chief sponsor, a jute magnate. Sir James Caird gave £24,000, and Shackleton went on to name all three of the ship's lifeboats after his biggest backers.

Shackleton's sense of an unseen extra companion on South Georgia inspired lines in which TS Eliot poem?

The Waste Land. Shackleton wrote that on the march 'it seemed to me often that we were four, not three'; Eliot's notes credit an Antarctic account, 'I think one of Shackleton's', for his lines on a phantom walker.

Who begged Shackleton for a place in the James Caird?

Tom Crean. Shackleton had meant to leave him on the island as a prop for the men staying behind, but gave way, and Crean went on to cross South Georgia's mountains at his side.

What did the men nickname their winter living quarters below decks on the icebound Endurance?

The Ritz. To keep warm through the polar night the officers and scientists moved out of the deckhouse into cubicles in a cleared storage space, which became their dining room for the winter.

How did the men adapt their boots for the crossing of South Georgia's mountains?

By pushing screws into the soles. The carpenter drew the screws out of the James Caird herself, and with those, an adze and a length of rope three men crossed the island's mountains in 36 hours.

Which South Georgia whaling station did Shackleton's party reach after crossing the island in May 1916?

Stromness. On the last day the three men heard its seven o'clock steam whistle carry across the mountains, the first sound from the outside world to reach them since they had left South Georgia in December 1914.

Which country's navy provided the tug Yelcho that finally rescued the men on Elephant Island?

Chile. The little tug had no radio, no proper heating and no double hull, yet Captain Luis Pardo took her through the winter ice on the fourth rescue attempt and brought off every man.

What sheltered the 22 men stranded on Elephant Island for four and a half months?

Two upturned lifeboats. The men turned the boats over to roof a hut, and whenever the sea was clear of ice their commander had them roll up their sleeping bags, saying 'the boss may come to-day'.

Too old for conscription, Shackleton was sent to Buenos Aires in 1917 to do what war work?

Boost British propaganda. He had volunteered for the army and kept asking for a posting to France; the Department of Information sent him to South America instead, and he was home again by April 1918.

In which conflict did Shackleton serve as a temporary major advising on arctic equipment in 1918–19?

Russian Civil War. Shackleton advised the British force in North Russia on arctic kit and training, won an OBE, and came home with schemes to develop the region that died when the Bolsheviks took it.

What was the title of Shackleton's 1919 book about the Endurance expedition?

South. As with his Nimrod book, Shackleton dictated it to the New Zealand journalist Edward Saunders, and he dedicated it to comrades 'who fell in the white warfare of the South and on the red fields of France and Flanders'.

What was the name of Shackleton's last ship, a converted Norwegian sealer?

Quest. Shackleton bought the little sealer with a schoolfriend's money for a voyage to the Canadian Arctic; when that plan collapsed, the same friend, John Rowett, paid to send her to the Antarctic instead.

When Shackleton asked his doctor what he ought to give up, moments before he died, what was the reply?

'Chiefly alcohol, Boss'. Alexander Macklin had just told him to lead a more regular life; moments after the exchange, in the small hours of 5 January 1922, Shackleton suffered the heart attack that killed him.

Where is Shackleton buried?

Grytviken cemetery, South Georgia. His coffin had reached Montevideo on its way to England when his wife Emily asked that he be buried on the island; in 2011 the ashes of his second-in-command were laid beside him.

Distrusting dogs after the Discovery expedition, which animals did Shackleton rely on to haul sledges toward the Pole in 1908?

Ponies. Shackleton shipped Manchurian ponies south and pinned his hopes on them, but the last one vanished down a crevasse on the great glacier, leaving four men to haul the sledges themselves.

Raymond Priestley said to pick Scott for scientific method and Shackleton when disaster strikes, but which explorer for speed and efficiency?

Roald Amundsen. Priestley had served under both Britons; none of Shackleton's expeditions reached its goal, yet his is the line everyone quotes: 'get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton.'

As Endurance was abandoned, what did Shackleton throw onto the ice to show the men what no longer mattered?

Gold sovereigns. Limiting every man to two pounds of personal gear, he threw down the coins and a gold cigarette case, then kept only a few pages torn from the Bible the Queen Mother had given the ship.

Which youth movement supplied two members of Shackleton's last expedition, picked from a flood of applicants?

The Boy Scouts. A Daily Mail appeal drew the applications; one of the chosen pair was sent home seasick from Madeira, while the other, James Marr, went on to a career as a polar scientist.

Which actor played Shackleton in Channel 4's Emmy-winning 2002 drama about the Endurance expedition?

Kenneth Branagh. None of it was filmed in Antarctica: the production went north instead, and Greenland's coast doubled for the Antarctic ice.

Which expedition photographer's images of the Endurance made him independently famous?

Frank Hurley. Shackleton had sold the film rights before sailing, and the Australian's cases of negatives were pulled from the flooded wreck before she sank.

When Shackleton was six, his father left the family farm to study medicine at which university?

Trinity College Dublin. Henry Shackleton took his medical degree there in 1884 and moved the family to London within months, partly in search of better prospects for a newly qualified doctor.

What ruined the dog teams on the 1902 southern journey of Scott, Wilson and Shackleton?

Spoiled food. Scott came to blame the dried fish the dogs were fed, writing that it was 'having a permanently bad effect'; every animal died, leaving the sledges to be hauled home by hand.

Which trio reached the area of the South Magnetic Pole in January 1909 during the Nimrod expedition?

David, Mawson and Mackay. Under orders from Shackleton, the three dragged their sledges to the pole's estimated position, raised the Union Jack and claimed Victoria Land for the British Empire.

Which game did Shackleton's men play on the ice floe beside the trapped Endurance?

Football. Whenever the pack held the ship up the men turned out on the floe, and one match ran on until about midnight, when the captain dropped through a patch of rotten ice while fetching the ball.

Which frostbitten parts of Endurance steward Perce Blackborow did surgeons amputate after the boat journey to Elephant Island?

Toes. With only a blubber stove for warmth and a little chloroform as anaesthetic, the surgeons removed all five from his left foot, and the operation was a success.

Before Nimrod sailed for the ice in 1908, New Zealand swore Shackleton in to which official role?

Postmaster. The government printed him a special issue of penny stamps overprinted 'King Edward VII Land', and back home he hoped to make money by selling such stamps to collectors.

In June 2024 a Canadian-led search found the wreck of Shackleton's last ship off which coast?

Labrador. The ship went back to sealing after Shackleton's death and in 1962 was holed by ice, just as Endurance had been; the searchers found her almost upright, 390 metres down.