Ernest Shackleton

Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton, who lived from 15 February 1874 to 5 January 1922, was an Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who led three British expeditions to Antarctica and ranks among the principal figures of what is known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. His first polar experience came as third officer on Robert Falcon Scott's Discovery expedition of 1901 to 1904, and during his own Nimrod Expedition of 1907 to 1909 he and three companions set a new farthest-south record at 88 degrees 23 minutes, just 97 geographical miles from the South Pole, the largest single advance toward the pole in the history of exploration, for which he was knighted by King Edward VII. After Roald Amundsen reached the pole in December 1911, Shackleton turned to a new goal, crossing Antarctica coast to coast via the pole, an ambition that became the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914 to 1917. That expedition's ship, Endurance, became trapped in pack ice and sank in the Weddell Sea in November 1915, and Shackleton's crew survived by camping on the disintegrating sea ice before launching lifeboats on a stormy 720 nautical mile voyage to reach Elephant Island and then South Georgia, an episode now remembered as his most famous exploit and one that brought every member of his crew home alive. Shackleton died of a heart attack in 1922 while his ship was moored at South Georgia during a fourth expedition, and he was buried there at his wife's request.