Ernest Shackleton
On 5 January 1922, in the harbour of a small British subantarctic island, South Georgia, one of Britain’s greatest explorers died. Sir Ernest Shackleton; irrepressible, determined and heralded as one of humanity’s greatest leaders.
On the face of it, Shackleton oversaw a series of failures. Of four Antarctic expeditions, he was sent home from the first, turned his party back within 100 miles of the South Pole on the second, lost his ship on the third, and never returned from the last. Was he a victim of endless misfortune? Or was he careless, even reckless?
