Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton was a man with lofty goals. He was a big man. Not physically but in character. He had a big personality. Incredibly charismatic, he was an exceptional leader. He was very good at inspiring loyalty in others, at rallying people together. He was very, very ambitious, some might say over confident. Because, despite his big personality, despite his ambition and natural leadership skills, despite being knighted, despite his later fame, Ernest Shackleton was really a huge failure. Yeah. Almost everything this man did failed. He failed to reach the south pole first. He failed to cross the continent of Antarctica. He failed in many business endeavors, tobacco, stamp collecting, a Hungarian mining venture. He failed miserably in politics. He spent most of his life in debt and died penniless in 1922. And yet, the story I’m about to tell you while, yes an epic failure in many ways, is also one of the greatest success stories of all time. Because, turns out, failure and success are not mutually exclusive and sometimes you must fail in order to truly succeed. Let’s fix that. 

 

Hello, I’m Shea LaFountaine and you’re listening to History Fix where I discuss lesser known true stories from history you won’t be able to stop thinking about. Ernest Shackleton just keeps popping into my life and not like in the same way as Thomas Jefferson or Christopher Columbus or Thomas Edison or Henry VIII. Not like that. In a different way. He’s not in everyone else’s stories like they were. He’s sort of off doing his own thing and yet he keeps coming up. People keep randomly, organically mentioning him to me. Gary Arndt in episode 116 about UNESCO and then the whole Endurance/Endeavor mixup in episode 118 about shipwrecks. He’s been hanging out in my subconscious for a long time and I need to figure out why. This may be very woo woo of me but I tend to look for signs from the universe, coincidences some might call them. They happen a lot with this podcast and they often reassure me that I’m on the right path. The universe has been forcing Ernest Shackleton on me for quite some time and I’ve mostly been ignoring it. I’m starting to realize I think there’s a lesson in this story and I don’t totally know what it is yet. But there’s an important lesson that needs to be learned here. So I’m going to tell you the story of Ernest Shackleton and his many failures and let’s see if we can figure out what it is the universe is trying to teach me, or us, I guess. And if you haven’t checked out the video version of History Fix yet on YouTube or Patreon, this might be the episode to watch. There are so, so many amazing images, photographs to go with this story. 

 

Ernest Shackleton was born in Kildare, Ireland in 1874. His father was originally a farmer and there were 10 children in his family. Shackleton was the second born and the first of two sons. So yes they had 2 boys and 8 girls. The other son, his brother Frank, fun side story, would go on to gain a bit of notoriety as a suspect in the theft of the Jewels of the Order of Saint Patrick, also called the Irish Crown Jewels. These were stolen in 1907 and never recovered although Frank was later exonerated. Anyway, the father, Henry Shackleton, was a farmer. But in 1880 when Ernest was 6 years old, he gave up being a farmer and went to school to study medicine at Trinity College in Dublin. Four years later, now qualified as a doctor, Henry moved his family to London. And so here, right out the gate, we already sort of see inspiration for the young Ernest Shackleton. In the span of just a few years, his father completely reinvented himself from farmer in rural Ireland to doctor in London. Witnessing this as a child, 6, 8, 10, years old, Shackleton must have believed from a young age that anything was possible. You want to be a doctor? Go be a doctor. You want to explore Antarctica? Go do it. What’s stopping you? 

 

His father kind of wanted him to be a doctor too but Shackleton had other plans. At the age of 16 he left school and joined the merchant navy. Eight years later in 1898 he became certified as a master mariner which meant that he could command a British ship anywhere in the world. So this opened up a lot of doorways for Shackleton who was still only 24 years old. He served on a couple different ships and then on a ship called Tintagel (tin-taa-jul) Castle during the Boer War in 1899. There he met an army lieutenant named Cedric Longstaff who would unexpectedly change the course of Shackleton’s life. I love tracing things back to these little serendipitous chance encounters like this. This guy he met’s father, whose name was Llewellyn W. Longstaff, was the main financial backer of an expedition that was being organized in London called the British National Antarctic Expedition. Shackleton’s interest was piqued. Antarctica? A literal frozen wasteland? Sounds great! And he used his connections with the guy’s son, this financial backer’s son to secure himself a place on the expedition. He was going to Antarctica. 

 

This Expedition would come to be called the Discovery Expedition because that was the name of the ship, Discovery. It was led by a guy named Robert Falcon Scott whom Shackleton would eventually become sort of frenemies with as you will see. They developed somewhat of a rivalry. But at first they seem to have gotten along quite well. The ship arrived in Antarctica by way of New Zealand in January of 1902. And the purpose of this expedition was just exploration really, scientific and geographical research, exploration. And you know in my mind I was like “oh no January, why would they go in the middle of winter?” No. January is the middle of summer in Antarctica. So they get there and they set up camp. When winter does come they are mostly confined to the iced in ship. Shackleton serves to sort of entertain the crew. He edited the expedition’s magazine which was called the South Polar Times. According to steward Clarence Hare, Shackleton was quote “the most popular of the officers among the crew, being a good mixer.” So he’s quite well liked, sort of keeping morale high that first winter. He recognizes the importance of morale early on. In November, as things are thawing out a bit, Scott chooses two of the men to join him on this little mission where they are going to set off across land, on foot, to do some exploring. And really they want to see how far south they can get. They want to reach the farthest south latitude that they can. So Scott chooses a scientist and doctor named Edward Wilson as one of the men, handy guy to have around. And then he picks Ernest Shackleton as the other man. So he must have seen something in Shackleton that was valuable enough to pick him for this little mini expedition. 

 

So they set out with 22 dogs and sleds and stuff and they reach the record farthest south latitude at the time 82 degrees and 17 minutes south. But overall it doesn’t go well. All of the dogs, all 22 dogs die after their food becomes tainted. I don’t really know what that means, it rots, it goes bad, it spoils and all the dogs die. And, just so you know you guys, there are a lot of animal deaths in this story. Sorry, I know. I really hate it too. I want all the dogs and cats and horses to live always and forever. I don’t really care how many people die as long as the animals live but this is not that story unfortunately. So the dogs die. The three men, Scott, Wilson, and Shackleton are suffering from snowblindness, frostbite, and scurvy. Shackleton gets pretty sick. Edward Wilson wrote in a diary entry on January 14, 1903 quote “Shackleton has been anything but up to the mark, and today he is decidedly worse, very short-winded, and coughing constantly, with more serious symptoms which need not be detailed here, but which are of no small consequence a hundred and sixty miles from the ship, and full loads to pull all the way,” end quote. And so there’s this vibe of, Shackleton isn’t pulling his weight and then there’s also this vibe of, maybe Shackleton isn’t well enough for this expedition. Whatever the reason, Scott decides to send Shackleton home on a relief ship after the three men return in February. Some theorize that Scott actually resented Shackleton’s popularity amongst the crew and just used his illness as an excuse to get rid of him. Second in command Albert Armitage (third from left after Shack. Scott 5th from right) claimed that there had been a falling out between Scott and Shackleton on that journey south but that is unsubstantiated. Armitage didn’t go with them so what does he even really know about it?

 

Shackleton makes his way back to England. He recovers. He gets married to a woman named Emily Dorman. They have three children together. He has some business and political failures. In 1905, he became a shareholder in a company that was planning to make a fortune transporting Russian troops home from the far east. Anyone else reminded of the Sultana disaster here? Episode 118. But that doesn’t amount to anything. Then he unsuccessfully ventures into politics. When all that fails he decides he’s going to return to Antarctica cause, you know, it went so well last time. Now he wants to head his own expedition to Antarctica with a specific goal in mind. He wants to be the first person to reach the south pole. So he starts raising funds, finding investors, for this expedition which will come to be called the Nimrod Expedition, because that’s what his ship was called, Nimrod. If you’re confused about that name, I was too so I looked into it. Because today, a nimrod is like a stupid person, right like a fool. So why would they name the ship that? Well that’s a fairly new meaning of the word nimrod. It’s actually a word from the bible that meant “mighty hunter before the lord.” A nimrod was a skilled hunter, that’s what the word originally meant. It was actually the cartoon Bugs Bunny that changed the meaning because they would refer to the character Elmer Fudd as a nimrod, a skilled hunter, in an ironic way, like a sarcastic way, because he wasn’t right? He wasn’t a very good hunter. But no one really even knew that nimrod meant skilled hunter so they just thought it meant like a fool. Cause he was a fool. So, there you go, when the ship was named Nimrod it meant skilled hunter not a foolish person. 

 

During the earlier expedition Shackleton had gone on with Robert Falcon Scott, they had established a hut at a place they called McMurdo Sound. This was like a base of operations right, like a fort, that Scott had left behind. So during this trip, it would be convenient for Shackleton to head for that spot, right, it’s already established, there’s shelter, etc. But no. Actually, before he leaves England, he is pressured into promising Scott that he would not land at or use the McMurdo hut. So, there’s definitely a rivalry of sorts going on. Shackleton and Scott are competing with each other to some extent to be the top Antarctica explorer. So Scott is like “fine, go, but don’t you dare use my hut. You have to build your own hut.” Scott’s hut is still there. It’s actually really cool. If you’re watching the video version of this episode you are seeing images of it pop up. It is not glamorous but it’s something. But Shackleton can’t use it. He promises Scott he wont. 

 

So they set off in August of 1907 and they reach New Zealand by November. From there they are actually towed the 1,650 miles from New Zealand to Antarctica in order to conserve coal that they will need once they get there. They arrive in January of 1908 but their target destination, remember NOT McMurdo Sound, this new place is found to be full of unstable ice. They can’t stay there. So, despite his promise to Scott, Shackleton is kind of forced to head towards McMurdo Sound anyway. They go about 24 miles north of Scott’s hut to a place they name Royd’s Point. But it’s, you know, it’s close. They’re basically in his territory but whatever, they kind of have to be. 

 

They wait through the next winter and then in October Shackleton chooses three guys who are going to accompany him on a mission to get to the south pole, Frank Wild, Eric Marshall, and Jameson Adams. In January of 1909 they reach a new farthest south latitude of 88 degrees and 23 minutes. So new record set there but remember the south pole is their ultimate goal. They don’t make it to the south pole though. They end up having to turn around or risk starvation. They are running out of food. They have to eat half rations on the way back to make it last and I’m not talking about like half a breakfast, half a lunch, and half a dinner. Half rations was one biscuit per day. At one point Shackleton gives his one biscuit for that day to one of the other men, Frank Wild, who is not doing well. Wild wrote in his diary quote “All the money that was ever minted would not have bought that biscuit and the remembrance of that sacrifice will never leave me," end quote. They survived, they made it back to camp although they did not achieve their goal of reaching the south pole. Another group that was part of the expedition became the first people to climb Mount Erebus (ara-bus) which is a volcano in Antarctica and Shackleton’s group discovered the Beardmore Glacier while attempting to reach the south pole.

 

Shackleton returned to England a hero and was knighted by King Edward VII upon his return. Edward VII was the son of Queen Victoria and her successor to the throne. So he receives a hero’s welcome but he is not himself totally satisfied with the outcome of the expedition. His wife Emily later recorded quote “"The only comment he made to me about not reaching the Pole, was 'a live donkey is better than a dead lion, isn't it?' and I said 'Yes darling, as far as I am concerned,' and we left it at that," end quote. In 1910 Shackleton did the coolest thing ever. He made a series of three voice recordings using an Edison phonograph. So if you remember back to episode 97 about Thomas Edison, see he’s one of the guys who keeps butting into everyone else’s stories, rude. But if you remember back to the Edison episode, the phonograph is like the only thing Edison actually truly invented on his own without borrowing a lot of inspiration from other people’s ideas. It was essentially an early voice recorder. And so Shackleton recorded accounts of this Nimrod Expedition. I have a three minute recording of one of those phonographs he made that I’m going to share with you guys. I know it was a little hard to hear. If you’re watching the video version on YouTube or Patreon there are captions with it. For audio only folks, I’ll drop a transcript of it in the description if that helps. He talks about a harrowing experience while they’re trying to get to the south pole where they lose a pony actually, down a cavern, I warned you didn’t I? And then had to do this relay thing where they carry half their stuff a mile then go back, get the other half of the stuff, carry it the mile and so on. Lot of work. No wonder they almost starved. So this is the voice of Ernest Shackleton recorded in 1910: 

 

Shackleton recording: “Main results of the British Antarctic Expedition of 1907, under my command, are as follows. We reached the point within 97 geographical miles of the South Pole. The only thing that stopped us from reaching the actual point was the lack of 50 pounds of food. Another party reached, for the first time, the South magnetic pole; another party reached the summit of a great active volcano, Mount Erebus. We made many interesting geological and scientific discoveries and had many narrow escapes throughout the whole time. A typical narrow escape was when we were going up the great glacier towards the Pole. We were marching along, three of us harnessed to one sledge, in very bad light. Our last pony was being led by another man with 3,500 pounds of stores. All of a sudden we heard a shout of “Help!” coming from the man behind. We looked around and saw him supporting himself by his elbows on the edge of a cavern. There was no sign of the pony, and the sledge was jammed with its bow in the crevasse. We rushed back and helped the man out, and then hauled the sledge out. Then we laid down to have a look but nothing but a black gulf lay below. The pony may have fallen 1,000 or 1500 feet. Anyhow, he’s gone. What had happened was this: We, the first three, with our weight distributed, crossed in safety in the bad light the bridge over an unseen cavern. The weight of the pony following it was too much. It crashed through, but the swingle tree of the sledge snapped, and that saved the sledge. The man leading the pony said that he just felt a rushing sort of wind, the rope was torn out of his hands, he flung himself forward, and thus escaped. After this we four men had 1,000 pounds to pull and we were unable to pull the whole load at once, so we had to relay. That is, we hauled half our load for a mile, then we walked back a mile, and then we hauled the other half up. So for every mile we gained to the south, we had to cover three to do it. And slowly we arose up the largest and the longest glacier in the world, some days spending 12 hours doing 3 miles. Other times spending nearly half the day hauling the sledge up by means of the alpine rope. And thus we went along, and thus, we returned, having done a work that has resulted without, in great advantage to science, and for the first time returning without the loss of a single human life. And throughout all this, I was helped by a party of men who were regardless of themselves and only thinking of the good of the expedition. I, Ernest Shackleton, have today, March the 30th, dictated this in record.” 

 

I just thought it was so cool to hear his actual voice. That was recorded 115 years ago guys. That’s wild. Okay so Shackleton is back in England. He’s been knighted. He’s received this hero’s welcome. But he’s actually in serious debt. This is when he attempts all these various business ventures, probably to get out of debt but they all fail which probably puts him in even more debt. He tries starting a tobacco company. He comes up with a scheme for selling special postage stamps to stamp collectors. He tries to develop some sort of Hungarian mining venture that he had acquired. All of it fails. So what now? Go back to Antarctica I guess. Except by now, the south pole had already been reached by someone else. Norwegian explorer Roald Amundson was the first to finally reach it in 1911 followed by none other than his main rival, Robert Falcon Scott. So that life goal to be the first to reach the south pole is dunzo. Two people have already done it. Shackleton comes up with a new goal. He’s going to be the first person to cross Antarctica, to cross the whole continent and he starts planning this expedition and gathering investors. 

 

So here’s the plan this time. He is going to land in the Wedell Sea which you get to from Argentina. You go to Argentina and then to South Georgia Island and then south to the Wedell Sea. That’s where he’s going to land. Then he is going to walk across the whole continent to reach the other side, McMurdo Sound, Scott’s hut which you get to, remember, by going through New Zealand. There, there will be another ship waiting. So two ships, the Endurance, which Shackleton will be on, will go the Argentina, South Georgia Island, Wedell Sea route. Which, has there ever been a more aptly named ship than Endurance? My goodness. You’ll see. Anyway a second ship named Aurora is going the New Zealand to McMurdo Sound route. They are going to be laying supply depots of food and fuel from their side. Because Shackleton and his men can’t possible carry enough to make it the whole 1800 miles. The idea is, they get to a certain point and these guys have already reached it from the other side laying these supply depots and now they have the food to complete the journey. 

 

A lot of people, crazily enough, a lot of people wanted to join this expedition. There were reportedly over 5,000 applications to join his crew. He’s a popular guy after all. According to Wikipedia quote “At times, his interviewing and selection methods seemed eccentric; believing that character and temperament were as important as technical ability his questions were unconventional. Physicist Reginald James was asked if he could sing; others were accepted on sight because Shackleton liked the look of them, or after the briefest of interrogations. He loosened some of the traditional hierarchies to promote camaraderie, such as distributing the ship's chores equally among officers, scientists and able seamen. He made a point of socialising with his crew members every evening after dinner, leading sing-alongs, jokes and games. He finally selected a crew of fifty-six; shared equally, twenty-eight men on each ship,” end quote. 

 

So he gets the investors, he gets the ships, he gets the crew, he gets the dogs (they have 68 dogs), and they have a cat named Mrs. Chippy even though it was a male cat who belonged to the carpenter. Of note, they did not bring ponies this time. They brought ponies on the Nimrod but they proved too difficult in the Antarctic weather and, you know, falling down ravines and stuff like in Shackleton’s recording. So no ponies this time, thank goodness. They get ready to set out, but then, on August 3, 1914 something big happens. World War I begins. Now, ships have been grounded for much much less than this. But First Lord of the Admiralty at that time, Winston Churchill, who we know will go on to become Prime Minister later, Churchill, bless him, gives Shackleton the go ahead, “proceed.” And the expedition sets out, despite the war, on August 8th. So we’ve got, on the Endurance, we have Shackleton leading the whole expedition. Frank Worsley is commanding the Endurance ship and Aeneas Mackintosh is commanding the other ship Aurora. Then we have Frank Wild back again as second in command. We have a meteorologist who also plays the banjo. We have two surgeons, a geologist, dog handler, a physicist, a carpenter owner of Mrs. Chippy, a biologist, a photographer named Frank Hurley who took a bunch of really cool photos a lot of which will be popping up on the screen in the video version of this. Google Frank Hurley if you’re into photography guys, dude was incredible. Took all these amazing photos of the Endurance Expedition, has crazy photos of like live action combat during World War I. Wild. A very talented crew in many ways. Shackleton has handpicked this crew very specifically and not just for their professions. The banjo playing for example was probably a deciding factor. He had a large pool to choose from, over 5,000 applicants so these guys are the best of the best based on the rather strange criteria Shackleton used to choose them. He likes them, at least, we can at least say that, he really liked these guys. Except for one guy. I mean, I don’t know he may have grown to like him but he didn’t pick him. There was also a 19 year old stowaway on board, a Welsh sailor named Perce Blackborow who had not been chosen by Shackleton to join the crew and just snuck onboard the ship anyway. By the time he was discovered, it was too late to turn the ship around and take him back and so Shackleton assigned him to work the ship’s galley, which is essentially the kitchen. If you’re watching the video version, you’re seeing a picture of him with Mrs. Chippy the cat perched on his shoulder. 

 

So the Endurance left Plymouth, England for Buenos Aires, Argentina. From there it went to South Georgia Island and then on December 5, 1915 it left South Georgia Island and headed towards the Wedell Sea off of Antarctica. But disaster struck pretty much immediately. On January 19th, the Endurance became frozen, got stuck, in an ice floe in the Wedell Sea. After about a month of not being able to go anywhere Shackleton realizes they are likely trapped until the following spring which starts in September. So it’s like February right now. They are going to be stuck until September. That’s 7 months. Time to hunker down. Shackleton turns the ship into a winter station and they start to slowly drift north with the ice over the next few months. They just have to wait it out. September comes. Shackleton is hoping that, as the ice melts, the ship, which has been frozen to the ice, will come free. But that is not what happens. Instead, as the ice melts it puts a tremendous amount of pressure on the ship’s hull and by the end of October, it can no longer take the pressure and water starts rushing into the Endurance. 

 

So this is bad. They have no choice but to abandon the ship at this point. They get off the ship and are just like on the ice. All the men and dogs, all the equipment and provisions that are left are transferred to camps on the ice. And it’s a good thing because in late November, the wreck of the Endurance officially goes down, sinks below the surface of the freezing water. Mrs. Chippy the cat, unfortunately did not make it. They shot Mrs. Chippy, I know, I know you guys. I told you the animals do not fare well in this story, prepare yourselves. They shot her because it was like a mercy killing. They knew that she would not survive the ordeal and they didn’t want her to suffer. So, they were trying to be humane about it. The dogs, these are like snow dogs, they are better equipped to survive on the ice so they are spared for now. 

 

Over the next two months they camp out on this hunk of floating ice. Shackleton is hoping that they will drift towards Paulet Island around 250 miles away where they know some provisions are stored. You know, they don’t have an endless supply of food. Their food supplies are dwindling. They are hunting seals but still it’s difficult to feed 28 men and almost 70 dogs. At some point in here they realize they have to kill the dogs. They can’t afford to feed the dogs. They need the food to keep themselves alive. Shackleton wrote quote “Owing to this shortage of food and the fact that we needed all that we could get for ourselves, I had to order all the dogs except two teams to be shot. It was the worst job that we had had throughout the Expedition, and we felt their loss keenly,” end quote. Frank Hurley wrote quote “Four teams of dogs were shot: Messrs. Wild’s, Crean’s, McIlroy’s and Marston’s—(comprising a total of thirty magnificent sledgers). This step has been given lengthy consideration and…the decision is a wise one. The dogs consuming one seal daily, the same lasting the entire party three days…” end quote. And then Alfred Lansing writes about in detail how they went about shooting the dogs but I’m not going to read you that cause it’s the saddest thing ever and I really wish I hadn’t read it. But what it comes down to is like, either we kill the dogs, or we all die, us and the dogs. So they’ve killed most of the dogs. Some, two teams, are still alive, for now.

 

So they’re hoping to drift to Paulet Island. They actually get within 60 miles of it but they cannot get to it. They can’t get over the ice to reach it. Then, on April 9th, the ice floe they’ve been camping out on breaks apart into two chunks. Not good. Shackleton orders the men to get into the lifeboats and head for the nearest land which is Elephant Island 346 miles from where Endurance sank. No there are not elephants on Elephant Island. It’s named that because there are elephant seals there and also the island itself is kind of shaped like the head of an elephant which you’re seeing now if you’re watching the video version. It takes them 5 days in the lifeboats to get there. At some point during this five day journey the photographer Frank Hurley loses his mittens and Shackleton gives him his own mittens, suffering frostbite on his hands because of it, such was his concern for his crew. So they get to Elephant Island but there’s no provisions here. It’s far from any shipping lanes. It’s very inhospitable. There is a slim chance of anyone stumbling upon them on Elephant Island in order to rescue them. They have to go seek out help. Shackleton decides he’s going to take some men in the strongest lifeboat and they are going to go to South Georgia Island to get help. He knows there’s a whaling station there and there will be people and ships that can rescue the rest of the men. But South Georgia Island is over 900 miles away from Elephant Island where they are now. It’s kind of their only option though. That or just wait around to eventually run out of food and die. So that’s what they do. Shackleton takes five men with him and they set out for South Georgia Island to get help. It takes them two weeks to get there and they survive hurricane force winds in the process and finally land on the southern shore of the island on May 9th, very lucky to be alive. Rather than face the angry sea again, Shackleton decides to set off across the land with two of the men to reach the whaling stations on the northern shore. It’s a 32 mile journey over mountainous terrain. They stick screws into the soles of their shoes to help with the climbing and they reach the northern shore in about 36 hours on May 20th. Getting real wintery in these parts by now. They get to the whaling stations, to people that can help them. He immediately sends a boat to go get the three guys they left behind on the southern shore of the island and then he starts organizing a rescue mission to go get the other 22 men still on Elephant Island. These plans are foiled over and over again by ice, it’s winter now, which blocked access to the island. 

 

Shackleton can’t get any help from the UK, World War I is going on, they can’t spare a ship. Eventually gets help from the Chilean government. Chile sends a ship which successfully reaches Elephant Island on August 30, 1916. According to Frank Worsley, the expedition's navigator, who went with Shackleton to South Georgia Island, Shackleton’s hair turned gray between the time they reached the whaling station on South Georgia Island and when they finally rescued the men 3 months later. Such was the toll this took on him. The men had been isolated there for over four and a half months after Shackleton left to get help. They had been forced to kill the rest of the dogs, of course, and they also ate the dogs, of course. But now a rescue party arrives. Shackleton is on this ship sent from Chile approaching elephant island and all the men line up on shore and start waving at the rescue ship. Can you imagine? Can you imagine the sense of relief at seeing that ship approach? Shackleton is there and he counts them, the waving men, 22. Everyone is still alive, miraculously. And they are rescued. 

 

But what about the Aurora? The other ship that headed to McMurdo Sound on the other side of Antarctica to lay the supply depots for their crossing? It didn’t fare very well either. This group, called the Ross Sea Party, dropped off ten men to go place the supplies in the strategic location and then it was blown from its anchorage and out to sea where it drifted for months and months, unable to return. It eventually gave up and headed back to New Zealand, leaving those ten men behind. So after Shackleton rescues the men he left behind on Elephant Island, he makes his way to New Zealand to meet up with the Aurora and together they go back to rescue the Ross Sea Party men. I don’t know if the Aurora was just like “eh, oh well,” and it took Shackleton being like “um, no we have to go get them” for them to attempt the rescue, I don’t know, but Shackleton makes it happen. They go back to rescue the men who had successfully completed their depot laying mission by the way, although three men had died including the leader Aeneas Mackintosh. Although, you will be very pleased to hear that, while three men in this group died, three of their dogs survived the ordeal. 

 

Okay so all of that could have been viewed as an absolute disaster right? Did Shackleton achieve his goal of crossing the continent of Antarctica? No. Not even close. The mission failed almost immediately. They go back to Europe which is being ravaged by the first world war, remember. And Shackleton, although too old to be drafted to fight and suffering from a heart condition, he volunteers to join the British Army and requests repeatedly to be sent to the western front in France, as if he hadn’t faced enough peril yet. Guy is nuts. He’s also heavily drinking at this point. He was definitely an alcoholic. Sadly, two of the men who survived the Endurance Expedition actually died fighting in World War I immediately afterwards. After the war, Shackleton set his sights on Antarctica once again. He prepares for another expedition without very clear goals. He’s not going in trying to cross the continent this time. He just going like for fun I guess, to explore some more. He gathers a crew. Eight of the men from the last expedition join him on this one which says a lot after all they went through that they would still stick by him and want to go back with him. But this expedition sadly was never to be. When they arrived in South America, in Rio de Janeiro, Shackleton suffered a suspected heart attack. But, no matter, he was determined. He refused medical intervention and got on the ship anyway headed to South Georgia Island which they reached on January 4, 1922. The next morning he must have really been feeling bad because he summoned the ship’s doctor, Alexander Macklin, to his quarters. He was complaining of back pain and other issues. Apparently Macklin told him that he had been overdoing things, I mean, you know, just a tad, and he should quote “lead a more regular life.” Like yeah maybe rowing 900 miles through ice and fighting in the front lines of World War I are a bit much. Shackleton replied quote “You are always wanting me to give up things. What is it I ought to give up?” And Macklin answered quote “chiefly alcohol, boss.” A few moments later, right after this conversation, Ernest Shackleton suffered another, fatal this time, heart attack and died. His wife Emily requested that he be buried on South Georgia Island. Macklin recorded in his diary quote “I think this is as the boss would have had it himself, standing lonely on an island far from civilization, surrounded by a stormy tempestuous sea, and in the vicinity of one of his greatest exploits,” end quote. 

 

Shackleton wasn’t really thought of much after his death. He wasn’t like some big celebrity or well known hero at first. He was a failure really, he was a massive failure. Almost every single thing he attempted to do had failed. He did not reach the south pole first. He did not run a successful tobacco company or a stamp collecting company or a mine in Hungary. He did not become a successful politician. He never crossed the continent of Antarctica. He never even made it back there this fourth time around. And people just kind of forgot about him. It wasn’t until a book came out in 1959 by Alfred Lansing called “Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage” that people started to realize who Ernest Shackleton was and how extraordinary his accomplishments actually were. No he did not accomplish any of his goals except for one, a goal he had not set out to accomplish, an unanticipated goal: rescue the men of the Endurance Expedition. And it’s this one accomplishment amongst Shackleton’s many many failures that sets him apart as a hero of history. The one he never set out to accomplish. And there is so much to learn from that. 

 

In that moment in September of 1916 when the water starts rushing into the compromised hull of the Endurance, Shackleton has to shift. He has to pivot, completely. He has to give up his goal of crossing Antarctica and adopt a new one, an entirely different goal of saving his men. Historian Nancy Koehn says in a Harvard Business School article quote “It's frequently very hard for people to do this, to give up on a long-sought-after goal. And yet sometimes the stakes can be as high as one's life and other people's lives. And so they were at that moment for Shackleton and his crew,” end quote. And if you think about it, this new mission was much less self-serving. Shackleton had to sacrifice his own goals, his life’s purpose really, in order to save these people. His regard for human life really shone through and although this man had failed at almost everything he had ever done, he would not fail at this, because it meant so much to him. It was of utmost importance. Nothing else mattered anymore. And that is what it took for Shackleton to finally be successful. The chances of rescuing all those men alive in those circumstances, slim to none. But Shackleton did it because he would not accept failure when it came to human lives. 

 

Koehn describes this mentality as sort of an old order, an old way of being that was largely lost in the carnage of the 20th century that started with the first world war. She says, and keep in mind she’s speaking within the context of Harvard Business School here. She says quote “The war opened a new century of human destruction on a scale that Shackleton could never have envisioned. In many ways, Shackleton was of an older world... One thing that is relevant about his moment to our own time is how it ends--with mass destruction. Destruction that would continue throughout the twentieth century, with two world wars, with mass genocide, with numerous terrible civil wars, the Holocaust, the nuclear age, and more recently, for Americans, with September 11. So we, like Shackleton, have some taste of the power of man to destroy others. Shackleton saw that irony. He cannot not have seen it. The reputation and survival that meant everything to him meant seemingly very little to the larger world in 1916. It would wait for our moment to reclaim it, revalidate it, sanctify it, and learn from it. I wanted our students to see that irony. I wanted our students to also see that some of the valiance, integrity, compassion, and respect for individual life that was part of an older world, and that was part of Shackleton, did not die on the fields of Flanders. It lives in all of us. We live to serve ourselves, greater good, and our organizations. We live to serve with integrity. There are historians who have said that a particular code of behavior, a way of seeing the world—one often associated with an older, feudal order—died with the First World War. I think it should live. I think it must live. I wanted our students, our executives, to believe it can live here now,” end quote.

 

You know, if you really think about it, in just one person’s lifetime they could have experienced, witnessed, been part of World War I, the Russian Civil War, World War II, the Holocaust, the Cold War, the Korean War, and the Vietnam war. Those global events spanned just 61 years. One person’s lifetime. And Shackleton was setting out for the Endurance Expedition right at the cusp of it all. He had not yet been changed by the atrocities collectively experienced by humankind throughout the 20th century. He had not been desensitized to the loss of human life like those who would follow. And this can be seen in his unshakeable determination to save the 27 men he brought with him on the Endurance. Shackleton possessed something that we desperately need today, something from the old order that has largely been lost. “Valience, integrity, compassion, and respect for individual life,” Koehn calls it. She stops at September 11th in her list of recent tragedies. That Harvard Business School article I quoted was from 2014. But so so much has happened between then and now. It goes so far past 911. According to the 2025 Global Peace Index, global conflict is currently at its highest level since World War II with over 59 active conflicts raging in more than 35 countries. Russia is invading Ukraine. Children are starving in Gaza. Americans are being forced into detainment camps. Gun violence is surging. Mental health is declining. Climate change is causing devastating natural disasters, just like they warned us it would, floods sweeping away our neighbors, our children. And yet, what are we focused on? Some tech CEO cheating on his wife at a Coldplay concert? Why are we still trying to cross Antarctica while 28 men are on the brink of death? Ernest Shackleton’s story matters because it harkens back to an old way of being that was mostly lost through the trauma of the last century. But it’s not gone. It’s still in us. And it’s high time we find it. I wanted to package this long awaited lesson up neatly and deliver it to you with a bow, but it’s not really that kind of lesson. The story of Ernest Shackleton might mean different things to different people. What do you need to do in your own life? In what way do you need to shift or pivot? What do you need to give up in order to fail like Shackleton? To fail in a way that isn’t failing at all. To fail successfully. 

 

Thank you all so very much for listening to History Fix, I hope you found this story interesting and maybe you even learned something new. Be sure to follow my instagram @historyfixpodcast to see some images that go along with this episode and to stay on top of new episodes as they drop. I’d also really appreciate it if you’d rate and follow History Fix on whatever app you’re using to listen, and help me spread the word by telling a few friends about it. That’ll make it much easier to get your next fix. 

 

Information used in this episode was sourced from Harvard Business School, BBC, ernestshackleton.net, the Antarctic Heritage Trust, and Wikipedia. As always, links to these sources can be found in the show notes.