What happened to Ernest Shackleton after Endurance

Disney’s new documentary, The Endurance: Shackleton’s legendary Antarctic expedition

, follows celebrated maritime archaeologist Mensun Bound’s 2022 expedition to locate the Endurance, the ship that Ernest Shackleton and his 27 crew left at the bottom of Antarctica’s Weddell Sea in November 1915. The film intersperses the trials and tribulations of Antarctica’s new explorers. Bound in the discovery of the ship, with the difficulties of Shackleton’s men 100 years earlier as they attempted a hitherto virgin transatlantic crossing in the best traditions of British exploration, which was hit hard in 1911 when Norwegian Roald Amundsen defeated Captain Robert Scott in the South Pole.

Shackleton joined Scott on his 1901 Discovery expedition, which was ultimately abandoned with Scott being invalided back to the UK, suffering from snow blindness, frostbite and scurvy. There was some conjecture that Scott and Shackleton’s relationship had broken down during the voyage, and Scott wrote that he felt Shackleton’s days as an explorer were over.: “He should not risk further hardship in his current state of health.” Once recovered, however, according to the BBCShackleton led the successful Nimrod Expedition (1907-1909) back to Antarctica, for which he was knighted and awarded an award-winning silver Polar Medal.

Sir Ernest Shackleton joined the British Army after the sinking of the Endurance

Despite the invasion of ill health, Shackleton played his part

Given his health issues on the Discovery voyage, according to The Guardiancoupled with the severe damage suffered during the Endurance expedition, It is not surprising that Shackleton was considered too old and infirm to be recruited into the British army.. However, he repeatedly asked to be placed at the front. Instead, in 1917, he was sent to Buenos Aires, Argentina, on a failed diplomatic mission to persuade Argentines and their Chilean neighbors to join the Allies. From there he was sent to Spitzbergen, Tromso and Murmansk, on missions that contributed to the war effort.

Promoted to the rank of major in 1918, he served in the northern Russian expeditionary force, advising on the war in the Arctic. He received an OBE, but after the Bolsheviks took control he was forced to return to Britain in March 1919 and was discharged six months later. Famously disastrous with money and considerably in debt, he began publishing his own account of the Endurance expedition, South, and embarked on a long and grueling public speaking tour. Quickly tiring of the lecture circuit, Shackleton longed to return to sea: “I’m only good as an explorer and nothing more“, he wrote to his wife.

Explanation of Ernest Shackleton’s final expedition and death

Shackleton suffered a fatal heart attack on the island of South Georgia

In 1920, financed by old school friend John Quiller Rowett, he set up a new project in Antarctica, acquiring a 125-ton Norwegian sealer, Seal Iwhich he renamed Quest. The objectives of the Shackleton-Rowett expedition were unclear, although Shackleton described it as a “oceanographic and subantarctic expedition“, and he left England in September 1921, arriving at his old stronghold, the island of South Georgia, on January 4, 1922. He immediately fell ill with a suspected heart attack, but refused the doctor’s advice to rest.and the next morning he suffered a final fatal heart attack. He was 47 years old.

Arrangements were made to return Shackleton’s body to England, before a message arrived from his wife Emily, asking that he be buried in South Georgia. A memorial service was held with full military honors at St Paul’s Cathedral, London.in the presence of King George V. He died heavily in debt, with less than £600 remaining in his estate (around £40,000 today). Shackleton was buried in Grytviken Cemetery, for sgmuseum.gson March 5, 1922, and a century later the ashes of Frank Wild, his second-in-command on the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, were buried on his right side.

How Ernest Shackleton’s death marked the end of the heroic era of Antarctic exploration

Shackleton and Scott were British heroes

With the deaths of Scott and Shackleton, a period of heroic polar expeditions undertaken by European explorers came to an end. In the early 1900s, Antarctica was seen as an unknown continent, ripe for geographic and scientific exploration, but the two British heroes, together with the Norwegian Amundsen, conquered it, to varying degrees.. Shackleton was generally seen as a secondary figure to Scott, whose effort at the South Pole more fully captured the public’s attention, but as time passed, a new appreciation of Shackleton’s exploits emerged, according to navy history.au. Resistance is Mensun Bound’s contribution to this effort.

A small book titled Shackleton in Antarcticapublished in 1943 by Oxford University Press, began to redress the balance. Although Shackleton was unable to achieve many of his exploration goals, his absolute tirelessness and leadership skills became better understood. In Resistance, The filmmakers give Shackleton’s Antarctic adventures due weight, noting how, time and time again, despite seemingly insurmountable odds in his fight for his crew’s survival, he was able to keep all 27 men alive. “We live long dark days in the south“, he wrote, “simply by the dogged and persistent effort to do what the soul said was right.”

SOURCES: BBC, The Guardian, sgmuseum.gs, navy history.au