SHACKLETON: “The Boss”

Ernest Shackleton (1874-1922)
British explorer

With admiration his men called him “The Boss”. He was larger than life, formidable, commanding and boisterous. His exterior personality was filled with perpetual affirmation. Inside, he was plagued with constant concerns, doubts and insecurity for his men. It is known that he suffered great anxiety and bad dreams while on the ice. During the perilous journey in a small boat to rescue those left behind on a tiny island off Antarctica, Shackleton said to Worsley: “If anything happens to me while those fellows are waiting for me, I shall feel like a murderer.”

Commanding the Transantarctic Expedition (1915), he led his party 180 miles to safety on the ice floes and then to Elephant Island, after ice crushed his ship Endurance. From there he and four others sailed 800 miles in an open boat, on high seas, in freezing temperatures and gale force winds to South Georgia Island. Landing on the unpopulated side of the island, Shackleton with Worsley and Crean crossed the mountains of South Georgia, (some at altitudes of 3000 feet), to a whaling station at Grytvicken. He subsequently gathered reinforcements and rescued the stranded main party and others, with out the loss of life.

Shackleton died of a heart attack at the start of a fourth voyage to the Antarctic and was buried, at the request of his wife Emily, on the island of South Georgia.