Ernest Shackleton

Sir Ernest Shackleton is regarded as perhaps the greatest of all Antarctic explorers. Born in 1874 in County Kildare, he was apprenticed in the Merchant Navy and became a junior officer under Scott during the 1901-04 expedition to the South Pole. In 1907 he led his own expedition on the whaler Nimrod, coming within ninety-seven miles of the South Pole, the feat for which he was knighted. The events of that expedition are chronicled in his first book The Heart of the Antarctic.

His heroic reputation was made during the ill-fated Endurance expedition, during which he lead his men to safety after being marooned for two years on the polar ice. South is his recounting of this expedition. He died in 1922 during his fourth Antarctic expedition and was buried in the whaler's cemetery on South Georgia Island in the South Atlantic.