#robert shackleton

[thebeautifulbook]

THE BOOK OF BOSTON by Robert Shackleton (Philadelphia: Penn, 1923). Cover designed by George Wharton Edwards.

[polarexplorerspoll]

POLAR EXPLORERS SHOWDOWN: BONUS ROUND

[nopickls]

The heroic age of Antarctic exploration - after The Terror opening credits

[areyougonnabe]

[sastrugie]

ok im back into my polar obsession - i know i missed alot in these fice years BUT im happy to know the fandom is still alive AHHHH

so - please reblog/ like this if you are interested in

antarctica

arctic

polar exploration

scotts expeditions

shackletons expedtions

fridtjof nansen, amundsen and co

belgica

terror the series

and polar stuff in general

cant wait to talk to yall <3

[thegoodthebadandtheart]

call off your ghost

[spacecoffeeandcartoons]

Scott having just the worst time as usual

[dondalsy]

i just made this and it already looks fried

[dead-and-gone-fanzine]

🧭 COVER REVEAL 🧭

by @huntseric

[ala-chrisgoods]

一些之前做的亚克力……（为什么没有阿蒙森 因为厂家忘了发货给我

is Wild Shackleton Scott Wilson(well Discovery

some I have made for the polar explorers...(Amundsen was forgot by the store......he will coming soon

[asofterpole]

well, him first.

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in 1938 – Death of Tom Crean, Irish seaman and Antarctic explorer, from Co Kerry.

The reasons why history has been unkind to Crean are twofold: first, the politics of post-independence Ireland; and second, what George Bernard Shaw described as the greatest of evils and worst of crimes — poverty. Tom Crean was an Irish seaman and Antarctic explorer from Annascaul, Co Kerry. He was a member of three major expeditions to Antarctica during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.…

[sizeofacherry]

british national antarctic expedition (1901-1904)

[nopickls]

The Tempest, Act III, Scene II 

South (1919), Frank Hurley The Great White Silence (1924), Herbert Ponting

[areyougonnabe]

Explain the Scott/Shackleton/Wilson drama. Be as detailed as you’d like.

omfg. okay. well. here we go, it will be very long, but if you want even more detail, please check out the book i sourced most of this from, shackleton's forgotten expedition by beau riffenburgh!

EPISODE 1: THE DISCOVERY EXPEDITION

in 1901, ROBERT FALCON SCOTT leads the first major british expedition to the antarctic since 1839

hired onto this expedition: doctor and naturalist EDWARD "BILL" WILSON and merchant navy lieutenant ERNEST SHACKLETON

what you must know about bill wilson is that he was an absolute dreamboat and paragon who emitted some kind of insane pheromone which made every man he met debilitatingly obsessed with him. i'm not kidding

anyway shackleton and bill immediately hit it off. shackles would wake bill up when there was an especially beautiful sunrise that he could paint, they would read poetry together, and when the ship wintered over, they would spent hours every day together working on the expedition newspaper, the South Polar Times - shackleton as editor/writer and wilson as artist. 

less immediately than shackles and wilson's bond, scott and wilson were also growing closer. in the middle of winter, wilson wrote to his wife that "although Shackleton is still my best friend, the Captain and I understand one another better than anyone else on the ship, I think."

DUN DUN DUNNNNNNN

EPISODE 2: THE SOUTHERN JOURNEY

scott asked wilson if he would go with him on the planned sledge journey to reach the south pole. wilson is like omg :3333 yeah sure but we probably need three people. scott chose shackleton as their third, knowing that's who wilson also would have picked—because of wilson's friendship with him, but also because shackleton Really Really wanted to go. 

so! off they go!!!!!! they have dogs who they don't know how to drive and skis that they don't know how to use and not nearly enough rations which aren't nearly nutritious enough. lmao. this is gonna go great 

besties it does not go great. 

by the time the support party turned back and the trio continued on, they had become exhausted, impatient, and hungry. 

scott and shackleton began to grate against each other, the differences in their personalities coming to the fore: shackleton romantic and improvisatory, scott practical and deliberate. they came from vastly different worlds: shackleton from the merchant navy and scott from the royal navy, and had very different approaches to discipline and leadership.

at some point around then, an Incident occurred. what that Incident was is not clear: reports differ, but it's likely that a verbal argument was had, insults were thrown, and honor was wounded. 

despite that, the march had to continue. but things became even more difficult as the men began to show signs of physical deterioration. most importantly, shackleton was beginning to be undoubtedly affected by scurvy. 

they turned for home at 82º17'S, which was a furthest south record but still a disappointment to the men. 

trying to get back home before the winter weather arrived was A Bad Time. shackleton was getting worse, both scott and wilson were affected too, but shackleton was by far the weakest of the three, possibly not just due to scurvy but also pain and shortness of breath from the heart condition that would eventually kill him 20 years later. 

contrary to popular opinion he was not "pulled on the sledge all the way home" - he usually staggered along beside it, behind it, or pathfinding out in front of it while the other two men hauled. 

but, while shackleton was out of hearing, wilson and scott were able to talk between themselves. according to some interpretations, this is when they formed the bond of friendship that would last until their deaths. 

by the time they reached the final depot, shackleton seemed to have improved, but a blizzard hit and he worsened again. at one point wilson didn't think he would last the night: but he pulled through, recovering to the point that he could lead the way again as they made the final dash for the ship. 

anyway. after they get back. despite the fact that [lpoe shackles voice] THEY ALL HAD SCURVY, scott pulls an utter asshole power move and forcibly invalids shackleton home on the relief ship. he basically is like you can't sit with us. 

shackleton was nearly recovered! scott was doing worse than him at this point (1month after they got back) AND YET. reportedly scott said that "if he does not go back sick he will go back in disgrace." YIKES

and it's even worse if you know that scott pulled strings to get bill's poor medical record disregarded in order to get him approved for the expedition!!!!!!!!!

EPISODE 3: THE BREAKUP

ok this is probably the most complicated part so i will have to simplify it a bit. 

but basically after the indignity of getting yeeted from the discovery expedition, shackles made it his goal to lead his own expedition and get to the south pole without scott. 

as he began planning the expedition, it became clear that scott was ALSO planning another expedition south, to finish what he'd started.

the clash was immediate and also incredibly stupid. essentially, scott wanted shackleton to pinky promise that under no circumstances would his independent expedition make any use of McMurdo Sound, the Great Barrier, or any of the land previously explored and charted during the Discovery expedition, because scott perceived it as "his domain." 

and shackleton knew this was stupid so he was like "i mean lol maybe w/e" but scott could not abide by the idea that shackleton was trying to scoop him out of his rightful claim to the pole as some sort of revenge for invaliding him home. 

in order to make scott see sense, shackles passed along his response first to bill wilson. but this was a mistake, because bill was firmly on scott's side. he told shackleton that he'd better do as scott says and stay out of mcmurdo sound. and shackleton was like............ ok i'll just go a little bit to the east then. 

and bill was like THATS NOT GOOD ENOUGH :))) and he and scott together were pushing for shackleton to give up rights to the entire "Ross Quarter" of antarctica. by this point bill had agreed to go south with scott on his planned expedition, but was still playing the mediator between him and shackles. 

anyway, together scott and wilson basically bullied shackleton into signing an agreement saying he would not go to the places that scott did not want him to go Unless He Absolutely Had To.

but guess what lol

he absolutely had to :))))

due to ice conditions, the Nimrod Expedition was forced to set up shop on Cape Evans, on Ross Island just a few miles north of where Discovery had wintered. 

and it's not that shackles was happy about this: he felt he was going back on his word. he wrote that "I felt each mile that I went to the west was a horror to me." 

EPISODE 4: AFTERMATH

despite shackleton having truly done his best to abide by his agreement with scott and wilson, the fact that he did end up reaching a new Furthest South—a mere 97 miles from the pole—from the region in which scott considered "his" was the final straw.

wilson and shackleton met when he returned and it seemed that their bond, so strong and close in the early days of the discovery expedition, had been sundered forever.

ok i have to post this whole quote bc its insane

"I wish to God you had done any mortal thing in the whole world rather than break the promise you had made... My opinion as you know was that you ought to have thrown up the whole show, that, you said was out of the question. But why in the name of fortune did you promise to do the second best thing, & then do the very worst!"

DUDE WTF??????

and then wilson goes on to write that he has "broken with [Shackleton] completely" and that he considers shackleton a "regular wrong'un" with "limited and rather low down ambitions" :///

meanwhile shackleton and scott had to go on being cordial to each other in public but definitely were known to dislike each other, coming to further minor blows about another planned shackleton expedition (which ended up being the Mawson expedition) 

and during the terra nova expedition scott, wilson, and the rest of the polar party followed shackleton's precise route across the barrier, up the beardmore glacier and the polar plateau towards the pole. scott obsessively compared shackleton's dates and distances to his own on the way south, determined to beat him and achieve those final 97 miles. 

which he did.

and then in March 1912 scott and wilson literally Die In Each Other's Arms. 

and shackleton was like . well what WAS shackleton like. GREAT QUESTION. WE DON'T KNOW :) bc he didn't talk about it. literally not a word!!!

IN CONCLUSION

scott and shackleton are sometimes depicted as straightforwardly rivals, which is sort of true, but the truth of the trio situation with bill at the heart of it all makes it so much more complicated and fascinating!!!!!! LONG LIVE THE TOXIC POLYCULE

[thegoodthebadandtheart]

Assume Everything I Say Is True