Ernest Shackleton: Antarctic Veteran
The infamous trip on the Endurance wasn’t Shackleton’s first journey to the Antarctic. He served on an expedition on the ship Discovery in 1901 to claim the South Pole for Great Britain, falling short by 853 kilometers (530 miles). He served on the two-year Nimrod expedition in 1907, stopping just 161 kilometers (100 miles) short of the pole. In 1914, Shackleton set out on an expedition to cross Antarctica from one coast to the other. Called the “Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition,” it was meant to be a pinnacle of Antarctic exploration. Shackleton wasn’t the first to explore Antarctica, and there were whaling stations along its coast, but he planned to make a name for himself, and Great Britain by exploring more than anyone had before. The British government funded the journey as a way to help morale against rising international tensions in the leadup to World War I.