Definitives

South Georgia & the South Sandwich Islands - Definitive

Release Date:  14 August 2009 

Ernest Shackleton 1874 - 1922

Ernest Shackleton, the Edwardian Antarctic explorer, has a special place in the history of South Georgia. He visited the island on three occasions. He died there in 1922 and is buried in the cemetery outside the whaling station at Grytviken.
 

In the late 1990s, Shackleton developed from relative obscurity into an iconic figure. He became famous for the qualities of leadership he had displayed in rescuing the crew of his expedition ship Endurance after it had been crushed in the Antarctic pack-ice. However, the year 2009 is the centenary of another, more significant, expedition in which Shackleton and three companions got within 100 miles of the South Pole. Although tantalisingly short of his goal, he had demonstrated the nature of the South Polar Region: that it is on a high, ice-covered plateau in the middle of a continent, in contrast to the North Pole which is in the middle of a deep ocean.

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