The Boss Who Never Lost a Man
When his ship was crushed by ice a thousand miles from safety, Ernest Shackleton didn't chase the pole anymore — he fought only for one thing: to bring every man home alive.
On 8 August 1914, as Europe slid into war, a ship called Endurance slipped out of England carrying twenty-seven men and one man's obsession: to walk across Antarctica, pole included, a trek of some 3,300 kilometers. That man was Ernest Shackleton, already famous for two earlier expeditions, and already twice denied the ultimate prize of reaching the South Pole first.
Shackleton had been chasing the ice since 1901, when as third officer on Robert Falcon Scott's Discovery expedition he helped set a new farthest-south record at 82°16' S before scurvy sent him home early. He returned in 1907 with his own expedition, the Nimrod, and came agonizingly close — 88°23'S, a mere 97 geographical miles (112 statute miles, or 180 kilometres) from the pole — before turning back to save his men. He came home a hero and was knighted. Then, in December 1911, Roald Amundsen beat everyone to the pole, and the record books closed on that particular race.
So Shackleton aimed higher: a full crossing of the continent. It was never to be. The Endurance became trapped in pack ice in the Weddell Sea, drifted for months, and was finally crushed and sank on 21 November 1915. Shackleton's ambition for exploration ended there — his new mission was survival. He and his men camped on the drifting ice until it broke apart beneath them, then took to open boats.
They rowed and sailed to the desolate, ice-bound Elephant Island. It offered no hope of rescue, so Shackleton made an extraordinary decision: he chose five men, reinforced one lifeboat — the James Caird — with help from the ship's carpenter, and set out across 720 nautical miles (1,330 km) of the most violent ocean on Earth to reach South Georgia, leaving twenty-two men behind to wait.
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