Thread by @marinamaral2

Photograph of the Nimrod Expedition (1907-09) to the Antarctic, led by Ernest Shackleton.

From left to right: Adams, Wild, Shackleton at the Furthest South at 88 degrees 23' S. on 9 Jannuary 1909.

The British Antarctic Expedition 1907–09, otherwise known as the Nimrod Expedition, was the first of three expeditions to the Antarctic led by Ernest Shackleton. Its main target, among a range of geographical and scientific objectives, was to be first to the South Pole.

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This was not attained, but the expedition's southern march reached a Farthest South latitude of 88° 23' S, just 97.5 nautical miles (180.6 km; 112.2 mi) from the pole. This was by far the longest southern polar journey to that date and a record convergence on either Pole.

A separate group led by Welsh Australian geology professor Edgeworth David reached the estimated location of the South Magnetic Pole, and the expedition also achieved the first ascent of Mount Erebus, Antarctica's second highest volcano.

The expedition lacked governmental or institutional support, and relied on private loans and individual contributions. It was beset by financial problems and its preparations were hurried. Its ship, Nimrod, was less than half of the size of Robert Falcon Scott's ship Discovery.

Nimrod was a 41-year-old schooner of 334 gross register tons that had been used to hunt seals and whales. Shackleton, who paid £5,000 for the ship, had it re-rigged as a barquentine. It also had an auxiliary steam engine but had a top speed of only six knots under this power.

In addition, the ship was so overloaded with supplies for the expedition that it could not carry enough coal to make passage to the Antarctic from New Zealand, and Shackleton had to arrange for the ship to be towed to the edge of the pack ice by tramp steamer Koonya.

The New Zealand government paid half the cost of the tow; Sir James Mills, Chairman of the Union Steamship Company, paid the other half. The Koonya was captained by Fredrick Pryce Evans during the tow.

Photo: Crew of the Nimrod waving goodbye to the Koonya.

Nimrod was initially captained by Rupert England, but Shackleton was dissatisfied with him and replaced him with Frederick Pryce Evans, who commanded the ship on the relief voyage in 1909. Nimrod was sold on Shackleton's return to Great Britain.

Nimrod's fate, 10 years after its return from the Antarctic, was to be battered to pieces in the North Sea, after running aground on the Barber Sands off the Norfolk coast on 31 January 1919. Only two of her 12-person crew survived.

Nevertheless, although the expedition's profile was initially much lower than that of Scott's six years earlier, its achievements attracted nationwide interest and made Shackleton a public hero.

After inspection by King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, Nimrod sailed on 11 August 1907. Shackleton remained behind on expedition business; he and other expedition members followed on a faster ship.

The entire complement came together in New Zealand, ready for the ship's departure to Antarctica on New Year's Day, 1908. As a means of conserving fuel, Shackleton had arranged with the New Zealand government for Nimrod to be towed to the Antarctic circle...

... a distance of approximately 1,400 nautical miles (2,600 km; 1,600 mi), the costs of the tow being met partly by the government and partly by the Union Steam Ship Company as a contribution to the expedition.

On 14 January, in sight of the first icebergs, the towline was cut; Nimrod, under her own power, proceeded southward into the floating pack ice, heading for the Barrier Inlet where six years earlier Discovery had paused...

... to allow Scott and Shackleton to take experimental balloon flights. The Barrier (later known as the Ross Ice Shelf) was sighted on 23 January, but the inlet had disappeared; the Barrier edge had changed significantly in the intervening years, and the section which...

... had included the inlet had broken away to form a considerable bay, which Shackleton named the Bay of Whales after the large number of whales seen there.

Shackleton was not prepared to risk wintering on a Barrier surface that might calve into the sea, so he turned the ship towards King Edward VII Land. After repeated efforts to approach this coast had failed, Nimrod was forced to retreat.

Shackleton's only choice now, other than abandonment of the expedition's goals, was to break the promise he had given to Scott: that he would not use Scott's old hut at Hut Point.

On 25 January Shackleton ordered the ship to head for McMurdo Sound.

Shackleton's February 1907 announcement that he intended to base his expedition at the old Discovery headquarters was noted by Scott, whose own future Antarctic plans were at that stage unannounced. In a letter to Shackleton, Scott claimed priority rights to McMurdo Sound.

On arriving in McMurdo Sound on 29 January 1908, Nimrod's progress southward to the Discovery base at Hut Point was blocked by frozen sea. Shackleton decided to wait a few days in the hope that the ice would break up.

During this delay, second officer Aeneas Mackintosh suffered an accident that led to the loss of his right eye. After emergency surgery by Marshall and Mackay, he was forced to relinquish his shore party place and go back to New Zealand with Nimrod.

He recovered sufficiently to return with the ship in the following season.

On 3 February Shackleton decided not to wait for the ice to shift but to make his headquarters at the nearest practicable landing place, Cape Royds.

Late that evening the ship was moored, and a suitable site for the expedition's prefabricated hut was selected. The site was separated from Hut Point by 20 nautical miles (37 km; 23 mi) of sea, with no landward route to the south.

The following days were occupied with the landing of stores and equipment. This work was hampered by poor weather and by the caution of Captain England, who frequently took the ship out into the bay until ice conditions at the landing ground were in his view safer.

The next fortnight followed this pattern, leading to sharp dissent between Shackleton and the captain. At one point, Shackleton asked England to stand down on the grounds that he was ill, but England refused.

The task of unloading became, in Riffenburgh's description, "mind-numbingly difficult" but was finally completed on 22 February. Nimrod at last sailed away north, England unaware that ship's engineer Harry Dunlop was carrying a letter from Shackleton to...

... the expedition's New Zealand agent, requesting a replacement captain for the return voyage next year. This knowledge was an open secret among the shore party.

After Nimrod's departure, the sea ice broke up, cutting off the party's route to the Barrier and thus making preparatory sledding and depot-laying impossible. Shackleton decided to give the expedition impetus by ordering an immediate attempt to ascend Mount Erebus.

This mountain, 12,450 feet (3,790 m) high, had never been climbed. A party from Discovery had explored the foothills in 1904 but had not ascended higher than 3,000 feet (910 m).

On 7 March the two groups combined at around 5,500 feet (1,700 m), and all advanced towards the summit. On the following day a blizzard held them up, but early on 9 March the climb resumed; later that day the summit of the lower, main crater, was achieved.

By this time Brocklehurst's feet were too frostbitten for him to continue, so he was left in camp while the others advanced to the active crater, which they reached after four hours.

Several meteorological experiments were carried out, and many rock samples were taken. Thereafter a rapid descent was made, mainly by sliding down successive snow-slopes.

The party reached the Cape Royds hut "nearly dead", according to Eric Marshall, on 11 March.

The expedition's hut, a prefabricated structure measuring 33 x 19 feet (10m x 5.8m), was ready for occupation by the end of February. It was divided into a series of mainly two-person cubicles, with a kitchen area, a darkroom, storage and laboratory space.

Shackleton's inclusive leadership style, in contrast to that of Scott, meant no demarcation between upper and lower decks. All lived, worked and ate together. Morale was high.

The most important winter's work was preparing for the following season's major journeys, which were to include attempts on both the South Pole and the South Magnetic Pole.

By making his base in McMurdo Sound, Shackleton had been able to reinstate the Magnetic Pole as an expedition objective. Shackleton himself would be leading the South Pole journey, which had suffered a serious setback during the winter when four of the remaining ponies died..

... mainly from eating volcanic sand for its salt content.

Shackleton's choice of a four-man team for the southern journey to the South Pole was largely determined by the number of surviving ponies.

The men chosen by Shackleton to accompany him were Marshall, Adams and Wild. Joyce, whose Antarctic experience exceeded all save Wild's, was excluded from the party after Marshall's medical examination raised doubts about his fitness.

The march began on 29 October 1908. Shackleton had calculated the return distance to the Pole as 1,494 nautical miles (2,767 km; 1,719 mi). His initial plan allowed 91 days for the return journey, requiring a daily average distance of about 16 nautical miles (30 km; 18 mi).

After a slow start due to a combination of poor weather and lameness in the horses, Shackleton reduced the daily food allowance to extend the total available journey time to 110 days.

Between 9 and 21 November they made good progress, but the ponies suffered on the difficult Barrier surface, and the first of the four had to be shot when the party reached 81° S.

On 26 November a new farthest south record was established as they passed the 82° 17' mark set by Scott's southern march in December 1902. Shackleton's party covered the distance in 29 days compared with Scott's 59.

As the group moved into unknown territory, the Barrier surface became increasingly disturbed and broken; two more ponies succumbed to the strain. As the journey continued, personal antagonisms emerged.

Marshall wrote that following Shackleton to the Pole was "like following an old woman. Always panicking".

However, Christmas Day was celebrated with crème de menthe and cigars.

Their position was 85° 51' S, still 249 nautical miles (461 km; 287 mi) from the Pole, and they were now carrying barely a month's supply of food, having stored the rest in depots for their return journey.

They could not cover the remaining distance to the Pole and back with this amount of food. Shackleton was not yet prepared to admit that the Pole was beyond them and decided to go forward after cutting food rations further and dumping all but the most essential equipment.

On Boxing Day the glacier ascent was at last completed, and the march on the polar plateau began. Conditions did not ease; Shackleton recorded 31 December as the "hardest day we have had".

On the next day he noted that having attained 87° 6½′ S, they had beaten North and South polar records.

That day, referring to Marshall and Adams, Wild wrote: "if we only had Joyce and Marston here instead of those two grubscoffing useless beggars we would have done it easily."

(we should use this grubscoffing useless beggars thing more often)

The party struggled on, at the borders of survival, until on 9 January 1909, after a last dash forward without the sled or other equipment, the march ended. "We have shot our bolt", wrote Shackleton, "and the tale is 88° 23' S"

The British flag was duly planted, and Shackleton named the polar plateau after King Edward VII.

The party turned for home after 73 days' southward travel. Rations had been cut several times to extend the return journey time beyond the original 110-day estimate. Shackleton now aimed to reach Hut Point in 50 days.

The four men were now much weakened, yet in the following days, they achieved impressive distances, reaching the head of the glacier on 19 January. As they began the descent they had five days' food at half rations, to last them until the Lower Glacier depot.

During the ascent the same distance had taken 12 days. Shackleton's physical condition was by now a major concern, yet according to Adams "the worse he felt, the harder he pulled".

The depot was reached on 28 January.

Wild, ill with dysentery, was unable to pull or to eat anything but biscuits, which were in short supply. On 31 January Shackleton forced his own breakfast biscuit on Wild, a gesture that moved Wild to write:

"BY GOD I shall never forget. Thousands of pounds would not have bought that one biscuit".

A few days later, the rest of the party were struck with severe enteritis, the result of eating tainted pony-meat. But the pace of the march had to be maintained; the small amounts of food carried between depots would make any delay fatal.

"We are so thin that our bones ache as we lie on the hard snow", wrote Shackleton.

From 18 February onward they began to pick up familiar landmarks, and on the 23rd they reached Bluff Depot, which to their great relief had been copiously resupplied by Ernest Joyce.

Their food worries were now resolved, but they still had to get back to Hut Point before 1 March deadline. The final leg of their march was interrupted by a blizzard, which held them in camp for 24 hours. On 27 February, when they were still 61 km from safety, Marshall collapsed.

Shackleton then decided that he and Wild would make a dash for Hut Point in hopes of finding the ship and holding her until the other two could be rescued. They reached the hut late on 28 February.

Hoping that the ship was nearby, they sought to attract its attention by setting fire to a small wooden hut used for magnetic observations. Shortly afterwards Nimrod, which had been anchored at the Glacier Tongue, came into view.

It was a further three days before Adams and Marshall could be picked up from the Barrier, but by 4 March the whole southern party was aboard and Shackleton was able to order full steam towards the north.

Shackleton gave instructions to Edgeworth David to lead a Northern party to Victoria Land to carry out magnetic and geological work.

After that, On 23 March 1909, he landed in New Zealand and cabled a 2,500-word report to the London Daily Mail.

Amid the acclamation and unstinting praise that Shackleton received from the exploring community, including Nansen and Amundsen, the response of the Royal Geographical Society was more guarded.

Its former president, Sir Clements Markham, privately expressed his disbelief of Shackleton's claimed latitude.

However, on 14 June, Shackleton was met at London's Charing Cross Station by a very large crowd, which included RGS president Leonard Darwin and a rather reluctant Captain Scott.

Shackleton was made a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order by King Edward, who later conferred a knighthood on him. The RGS presented him with a gold medal, although apparently with reservations.

"We do not propose to make the Medal so large as that which was awarded to Captain Scott", recorded an official.

Although in the eyes of the public he was a hero, the riches that Shackleton had anticipated failed to materialize.

The soaring costs of the expedition and the need to meet loan guarantees meant that he was saved from financial embarrassment only by a belated government grant of £20,000.

The farthest south record of the Nimrod Expedition stood for less than three years, until Amundsen reached the South Pole on 15 December 1911.

For his trail-breaking achievements, Shackleton received a fulsome tribute from Amundsen: "What Nansen is to the North, Shackleton is to the South".

Thereafter, Shackleton's Antarctic ambitions were fixed on a transcontinental crossing, which he attempted unsuccessfully with the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, 1914–17, although his status as a leading figure in the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration was by then assured.

At 2:50 a.m. on 5 January 1922, Shackleton suffered a fatal heart attack. The cause of death was atheroma of the coronary arteries exacerbated by "overstrain during a period of debility"

He had spent the previous years drinking heavily.

Shackleton was buried in the Grytviken cemetery, South Georgia, after a short service in the Lutheran church, with Edward Binnie officiating.

On 27 November 2011, the ashes of Frank Wild were interred on the right-hand side of Shackleton's grave site in Grytviken.

The inscription on the rough-hewn granite block set to mark the spot reads "Frank Wild 1873–1939, Shackleton's right-hand man."

Done.

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