Titans of History

SHACKLETON, SCOTT & AMUNDSEN

1874–1922 & 1868–1912 & 1872–1928

Difficulties are just things to overcome, after all.

Shackleton, in the journal of his South Polar journey (December 11, 1908)

Sir Ernest Shackleton, Robert Scott and Roald Amundsen were the three most inspirational Arctic explorers of the early 20th century.

Shackleton was born to Irish parents who settled in England, and at the age of sixteen he joined the merchant navy. His voyages took him all around the world, until in 1901 he was appointed to serve on board the Discovery, a steam vessel specially built for work in the ice, which was carrying Commander Robert Falcon Scott to Antarctica. Scott chose Shackleton to accompany him and Edward Wilson on a dog- and man-hauled sled journey toward the South Pole.

On the journey—during which temperatures dipped below –80°C—all three men eventually became ill with scurvy, but Shackleton, coughing up blood, seemed worst affected. Although he was invalided home, where he briefly tinkered with politics, he never gave up the dream of a further attempt on the South Pole. In 1907 he returned to Antarctica, this time as leader. He had bought a ship, raised funds and engaged a crew of seamen and scientists. The expedition broke new ground. One party reached the South Magnetic Pole, another made the first ascent of Mount Erebus, an active volcano. In late 1908 Shackleton led another, heroic sled journey toward the geographic South Pole. Despite bitter conditions, in January 1909 the party came within 100 miles of their destination—further south than any man had ever been before, although his party did not quite make it to the Pole. On his return to Britain, Shackleton was lauded as a hero and knighted by the king.

Ernest Shackleton’s gallant attempt on the South Pole in 1908–9 narrowly preceded the battle between his former comrade Robert Falcon Scott and the Norwegian Roald Amundsen, which would become one of the most famous races of discovery in history.

Scott joined the Royal Navy in 1880, when he was just twelve years old. By 1897 he had become a first lieutenant. He led the 1901–4 mission to Antarctica and was recognized as a dedicated scientific investigator and navigator. When he returned to England he was promoted to captain.

By 1910, having seen Shackleton overtake him in the bid to journey ever deeper south, Scott—still a national figure—raised the funds for a private expedition of scientific and geographical discovery, with the ultimate aim of reaching the South Pole.

At the same time, Amundsen had established his name as commander of the first vessel to sail through the sought-after Northwest Passage—a route joining the Atlantic and Pacific oceans across the top of North America—and was also intent on reaching the North Pole. When he heard in 1909 that others had claimed the North Pole, he decided to turn south.

During his time in the Arctic Amundsen had learned a lot from the indigenous people about survival in the harsh cold, and he had become expert in using dogs to pull sledges. This, combined with careful planning, meant that when his party set out for the South Pole in October 1911, even severe conditions and the choice of a new, untrodden route could not prevent them from reaching their destination on December 14. Amundsen left behind a tent, with a note for Scott to confirm that he had been there. The Norwegian was a brilliant planner and student of Arctic life but also showed heroic endurance—and he should be celebrated just as much as Scott.

Scott’s party was less skilled in polar travel, and they reached the Pole more than a month after the Norwegian. Despite physical fortitude, Scott’s return journey was hampered by some of the severest Antarctic weather ever known, injuries to members of the party, and ill-placed food depots.

It became clear in mid-March 1912 that their party was doomed. One man had already died of an infection. Then, on March 17, a second man, Captain Oates, left the tent, saying “I am just going outside and may be some time,” a comment of classic English understatement, and crawled into a blizzard, hoping that his certain death would increase his companions’ chances of survival.

But Oates’s sacrifice was not enough. The group was pinned to their tent by blizzards and they froze to death just eleven miles from the next food depot. All the while, Scott kept recording his moving journal of events. “Had I lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman,” he wrote in his final entry. “These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale.”

In 1914 Shackleton set out in charge of the British Imperial Trans-Antarctic expedition. His aim was to cross Antarctica from the Weddell Sea to McMurdo Sound, via the South Pole. However, the voyage of the Endurance was overtaken by misfortune. The enormous rafts of floating ice in the Weddell Sea closed in on the ship, and after ten months of drifting with the pack ice the Endurance was crushed, without even having reached the expedition’s jumping-off point on the coast. All of the men aboard were forced onto the surrounding ice floes, where they camped for another five months as they drifted north with the ice. In April 1916 they made their way to the northern edge of the ice floe and embarked in three small boats; after six days they reached Elephant Island in the South Shetlands.

From there, Shackleton and a handful of colleagues decided to head to the island of South Georgia, 800 miles away. They completed the hazardous journey across the stormy Southern Ocean in a tiny boat, reaching the island’s south coast in seventeen days. Even then, they had to climb an uncharted mountain range in the middle of the island to reach a Norwegian whaling station on its northern coast. In a single push over two days, Shackleton and two companions made it. From there, Shackleton organized the rescue of the rest of his men on Elephant Island, reaching them at the fourth attempt. Incredibly, not a single life had been lost.

When Shackleton returned to England, he was too old to be conscripted to fight in the First World War, but he volunteered anyway. A diplomatic mission to try to woo Chile and Argentina to the Allied war effort was a failure, as was a covert mission to establish a British presence in Norwegian territory. Shackleton returned to England in 1919 to lecture and write. In 1921 he set out on a voyage to circumnavigate Antarctica but died of a heart attack on board his ship, the Quest, in 1922, at South Georgia.

The polar historian Apsley Cherry-Garrard wrote, “for a joint scientific and geographical piece of organization, give me Scott … for a dash to the pole and nothing else, Amundsen; and if I am in the devil of a hole and want to get out of it, give me Shackleton every time.”