Ernest Shackleton

Ernest Shackleton was a British explorer who led some of the first journeys to Antarctica. He lived from 1874 to 1922. He is most famous for a trip that went terribly wrong, and for bringing every one of his men home alive anyway.

Shackleton was born in Ireland and grew up in London. He went to sea as a teenager and worked his way up to ship's officer. In 1901, he joined his first trip to Antarctica as part of a team led by Robert Falcon Scott. The cold nearly killed him, but he came back wanting more. In 1909, he led his own trip and got within 97 miles of the South Pole before he had to turn back. His men were starving, and he chose their lives over the prize.

His most famous trip began in 1914. Shackleton planned to cross the entire continent of Antarctica on foot. His ship, called Endurance, sailed into the Weddell Sea. Before the team could even land, the ship got stuck in pack ice. For ten months, the ice slowly crushed Endurance until it sank. Shackleton and his 27 men were stranded on the ice with only the supplies they could save.

What happened next is one of the most amazing survival stories ever recorded. The men camped on drifting ice for almost five months. When the ice broke up, they piled into three small lifeboats and rowed for a week to a rocky, empty place called Elephant Island. From there, Shackleton and five others set out in a 22-foot lifeboat to find help. They sailed 800 miles across the Southern Ocean, which has some of the worst storms on Earth. Waves there can rise as high as a six-story building.

After 16 days at sea, they reached an island called South Georgia. But the whaling station was on the other side. Shackleton and two men hiked across mountains and glaciers that no one had ever crossed before. They walked for 36 hours straight. When they finally stumbled into the station, the workers did not recognize them. Shackleton then organized a rescue and brought back every man he had left on Elephant Island. Not one of his crew died.

Shackleton went south one last time in 1921. He died of a heart attack on board his ship near South Georgia. His wife asked that he be buried there, on the island where his greatest journey had ended. Today, explorers, soldiers, and business leaders still study how he kept his men alive when everything went wrong.