[12] At Deception Island in 1966 the Shackleton met and provisioned Bill Tilman's SV Mischief, the first private expedition to visit a British Antarctic base.
[13] Shackleton joined the rescue of Deception Island base members when the volcano erupted in December 1967 and again in February 1969.
[16] Shackleton was operated by the NERC after 1969, and underwent major conversion to fit her as a oceanographic research ship, starting in November 1970 at the shipyard of James Lamont, Greenock.
[22][19] During her service with NERC the ship carried out cruises in the Antarctic, Arctic, Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans, the Mediterranean and Red Sea.
[2] She was ‘retired’ from the South Atlantic in 1989 and reconfigured as a soils and high resolution seismic survey vessel, operated by Gardline Shipping Limited.