[15] This was partly in search of better professional prospects for the newly qualified doctor, but another factor may have been unease about the family's Anglo-Irish ancestry, following the 1882 assassination by Irish nationalists of Lord Frederick Cavendish, the British Chief Secretary for Ireland.

[14] He was quoted later as saying: "I never learned much geography at school [...] Literature, too, consisted in the dissection, the parsing, the analysing of certain passages from our great poets and prose-writers ... teachers should be very careful not to spoil [their pupils'] taste for poetry for all time by making it a task and an imposition.

[21] One of his shipmates recorded that Shackleton was "a departure from our usual type of young officer", content with his own company though not aloof, "spouting lines from Keats or Browning", a mixture of sensitivity and aggression but not unsympathetic.

[23] The British National Antarctic Expedition—known as the Discovery Expedition after the ship Discovery—was the brainchild of Sir Clements Markham, president of the Royal Geographical Society, and had been many years in preparation.

[26] Led by Robert Falcon Scott, a Royal Navy torpedo lieutenant lately promoted commander,[27] the expedition had objectives that included scientific and geographical discovery.

[33] He also participated, with the scientists Edward A. Wilson and Hartley T. Ferrar, in the first sledging trip from the expedition's winter quarters in McMurdo Sound, a journey which established a safe route on to the Great Ice Barrier.

[34] Confined to the iced-in Discovery throughout the Antarctic winter of 1902, Shackleton edited the expedition's magazine the South Polar Times,[35] a regular publication that kept everyone onboard entertained.

[36] According to steward Clarence Hare, Shackleton was "the most popular of the officers among the crew, being a good mixer",[37] though claims that this represented an unofficial rivalry to Scott's leadership are unsupported.

[38] Scott chose Shackleton to accompany Wilson and himself on the expedition's southern journey, a march southwards to achieve the highest possible latitude in the direction of the South Pole.

[44] He was in a severely weakened condition; Wilson's diary entry for 14 January 1903 reads: "Shackleton has been anything but up to the mark, and today he is decidedly worse, very short-winded, and coughing constantly, with more serious symptoms which need not be detailed here, but which are of no small consequence a hundred and sixty miles from the ship, and full loads to pull all the way.

[46] After a medical examination that proved inconclusive,[47] Scott decided to send Shackleton home on the relief ship Morning,[48] which had arrived in McMurdo Sound in January.

[52] With Sir Clements Markham's blessing, he accepted a temporary post assisting the outfitting of the Terra Nova for the second Discovery relief operation, but turned down the offer to sail with her as chief officer.

[71] To conserve coal, the ship was towed 1,650 miles (2,655 km) by the steamer Koonya to the Antarctic ice, after Shackleton had persuaded the New Zealand government and the Union Steamship Company to share the cost.

[73] The ice conditions were found to be unstable, making it impossible to establish a safe base at the Barrier Inlet, and an extended search for an anchorage at King Edward VII Land proved equally futile.

Shackleton was forced to break the undertaking he had made to Scott, and the Nimrod set sail for McMurdo Sound; according to second officer Arthur Harbord, this decision was "dictated by common sense" in view of the difficulties of ice pressure, coal shortage and the lack of any alternative base known to be close at hand.

[82] The other main accomplishments of the British Antarctic Expedition included the first ascent of Mount Erebus, and the discovery of the approximate location of the South Magnetic Pole, attained by Edgeworth David, Douglas Mawson and Alistair Mackay on 16 January 1909.

A revival of the vintage formula for the particular brands found was offered for sale, with a portion of the proceeds donated to the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust which had discovered the lost spirits.

[96] Among the ventures that he hoped to promote were a tobacco company,[97] a scheme for selling special postage stamps to collectors—overprinted "King Edward VII Land", based on his appointment as Antarctic postmaster by the New Zealand authorities[98]—and the development of a Hungarian mining concession he had acquired near the city of Nagybanya, now part of Romania.

[102] Shackleton's mind turned to a project that had been announced, and then abandoned, by the British explorer William Speirs Bruce, for a continental crossing via the South Pole, starting from a landing point in the Weddell Sea and ending in McMurdo Sound.

[142][h] For almost two months, Shackleton and his party camped on a large, flat floe, hoping that it would drift towards Paulet Island, approximately 250 miles (402 km) away, where it was known that stores were cached.

[152] Shackleton chose five companions for the journey:[153] the ship's captain Frank Worsley, who would be responsible for navigation; Tom Crean, who had "begged to go"; two strong sailors in John Vincent and Timothy McCarthy; and McNish.

Leaving McNish, Vincent and McCarthy at the landing point on South Georgia, Shackleton travelled with Worsley and Crean over 32 miles (51 km)[149] of dangerous mountainous terrain for 36 hours, reaching the whaling station at Stromness on 20 May.

Yelcho, commanded by Captain Luis Pardo, and the British whaler Southern Sky, reached Elephant Island on 30 August 1916, at which point the men had been isolated there for four and a half months.

[169] For his "valuable services rendered in connection with Military Operations in North Russia", Shackleton was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 1919 King's Birthday Honours,[170] and he was also mentioned in despatches by General Ironside.

[184][185] Hussey returned to South Georgia with the body on the steamer Woodville, and on 5 March 1922, Shackleton was buried in the Grytviken cemetery, after a short service in the Lutheran church,[186] with Edward Binnie officiating.

[207] This negative picture of Scott became accepted as the popular truth,[208] as the kind of heroism that he represented fell victim to the cultural shifts of the late twentieth century.

In 1993, Trevor Potts re-enacted the Boat Journey from Elephant Island to South Georgia in honour of Sir Ernest Shackleton, totally unsupported, in a replica of the James Caird.

[216] A photography exhibition titled "The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition" was open to the public for six months from April to October 1999 at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Led by explorer and environmental scientist Tim Jarvis, the team was assembled at the request of Alexandra Shackleton, Sir Ernest's granddaughter, who felt the trip would honour her grandfather's legacy.

[231][232] The musical play Ernest Shackleton Loves Me by Val Vigoda and Joe DiPietro made its debut in 2017 at the Tony Kiser Theater, an off-Broadway venue in New York City.