Ernest Shackleton
By:
February 15, 2011
Polar explorer ERNEST SHACKLETON (1874-1922) is today’s go-to fearless leader, although he didn’t discover the South Pole or cross the Antarctic continent. What he did do made such feats pale in comparison. In 1914, his ship, The Endurance, was crushed by pack ice, stranding his Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition beyond hope of radio or rescue. Shackleton led twenty-seven men on a nearly two-year journey across shifting ice floes, treacherous oceans, and uninhabited island edges. Their adventure culminated in a near-suicidal 800-mile lifeboat journey across the roughest seas in the world, as well as an impromptu, inexperienced traverse of an uncharted and glacier-ridden mountain range. The story of The Endurance involves so much suspension of disbelief (even though it’s all true) that every film about it has fallen short, and every written account has been crushed by the packed action. In 1917, when he returned everyone under his care alive, a nation shrugged and got back to the business of slaughter. But Shackleton’s irrepressible optimism and perseverance outlasted his era, and today his adventure is recognized for what it was: the most excellent.
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ADVENTURERS as HILO HEROES: Katia Krafft | Freya Stark | Louise Arner Boyd | Mary Kingsley | Bruce Chatwin | Hester Lucy Stanhope | Annie Smith Peck | Richard Francis Burton | Isabella Lucy Bird | Calamity Jane | Ernest Shackleton | Osa Helen Johnson | Redmond O’Hanlon | Gertrude Bell | George Mallory | Neta Snook | Jane Digby | Patty Wagstaff | Wilfred Thesiger | Joe Carstairs | Florence “Pancho” Barnes | Erskine Childers | Jacques-Yves Cousteau | Michael Collins | Thor Heyerdahl | Jean-Paul Clébert | Tristan Jones | Neil Armstrong
On his or her birthday, HiLobrow irregularly pays tribute to one of our high-, low-, no-, or hilobrow heroes. Also born this date: Conor Oberst.
READ MORE about men and women born on the cusp between the Anarcho-Symbolist (1864-73) and Psychonaut (1874-83) generations.
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