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Kenneth Branagh as Sir Ernest Shackleton, prolific polar explorer

Antarctica, December 1914 to August 1916

Series: Shackleton
Air Dates: January 2-3, 2002
Director: Charles Sturridge
Costume Designer: Shirley Russell

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

The Channel 4 series Shackleton aired in two parts during the first week of January 2002, winning Emmy Awards in two of the seven categories for which it was nominated among nods from the BAFTA Awards and Golden Globes. Kenneth Branagh stars as the titular Sir Ernest Shackleton, specifically depicting his leadership of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition toward the end of what many call the “Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration”. Though the specific expedition failed in its scientific objective, his leadership and the resourceful group’s survival have become legendary as a feat of, well, endurance. Despite this, Shackleton wisely avoids hagiography as it presents the titular adventurer with virtues and flaws intact.

After securing funding and approval from the British Admiralty despite looming war across Europe, Shackleton’s crew departed from Plymouth in August 1914 aboard the Endurance. Shackleton had purchased this Norwegian-built three-masted schooner, which was originally christened Polaris before he renamed it from his family motto (“By endurance, we conquer”), thus its journey from England through the South Atlantic was its maiden voyage. Following stops in Buenos Aires and South Georgia Island, Shackleton and his crew of 28 men—and 69 dogs—finally departed for the Antarctic on December 5th.

Shackleton commanded the Endurance through the Weddell Sea, while Aeneas Mackintosh helmed a supporting party aboard the Aurora through the Ross Sea. Hoping to make landfall by Christmas, the seagoing expedition stretched into January 1915 when the Endurance became beset in pack ice. To conserve fuel for a potential return to South Georgia, Shackleton cut the engines and began drifting in the ice… for nine months.

110 years ago today on October 27, 1915—one year and a day after the Endurance left Buenos Aires—Shackleton finally gave his crew the orders to abandon ship, establishing a camp on the ice after—aside from Frank Hurley’s photographs and Leonard Hussey’s banjo—each man was instructed to dump all but two pounds of personal possessions from aboard the ship. Endurance finally sank just over three weeks later on November 21, 1915, starting a new chapter as the crew realized their mission shifted from science to survival.

My job now is to make sure you all live: every single one of you. To do that, I cannot afford to be sentimental. If I am, you will die—die starving, die frozen, die mad. I’ve seen it before, I do not intend to see it again.

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