Three descendants of Sir Ernest Shackleton and his team are carrying out gruelling training in Greenland to prepare for an attempt to complete the explorer’s failed journey to the South Pole. The modern adventurers will set out this October, exactly 100 years after the original expedition and following the same full 900-mile, 80-day route as their predecessors. Shackleton’s crew were forced to turn back 97 miles from the Pole on 9 January 1909 in the face of howling icy blizzards and dwindling rations.
Shackleton set out on his 1908-09 Nimrod expedition to the Antarctic hoping to become the first person to reach the South Pole. Although he failed, he travelled further south than anyone else had before, and was hailed a hero and knighted when he returned to the UK. The 21st-century explorers are being led by Army Lt Col Henry Worsley, a descendant of Frank Worsley, Shackleton’s skipper on the Endurance, the ship used in a following Polar expedition in 1914.
Mr Worsley travelled to Greenland on 15 April with fellow team members City worker Will Gow and shipping lawyer Henry Adams for a “full dress rehearsal” for the “main event”. Mr Gow, 35, from Ashford, Kent, is related to Shackleton by marriage, and Mr Adams, 33, from Snape, near Woodbridge, Suffolk, is a great-grandson of Jameson Boyd-Adams, Shackleton’s number two on the unsuccessful expedition.
Mr Worsley, 47, from Hereford, says they chose Milne Land, an island just inside the Arctic circle, for their training because it mirrored the harsh conditions they would encounter at the Pole. “It offers us the right temperatures we’re after and a bit of everything that will be thrown at us - it’s got a number of glaciers, a little ice cap and some sea ice,” he explained.
The adventurers are aiming to spend 16 days on the ice, dragging 250lb sledges 10-12 miles a day. Mr Worsley, says: “To average that is asking quite a lot - you are at the vagaries of the weather.The physical side we can do. Like all these things, it will become a mental challenge as we progress.”
The three men will set out from the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf at exactly 10am on 29 October, as Shackleton and his team did a century earlier. They will be joined by another three descendants of their predecessors for the final push on the Pole, at the point where Shackleton gave up. Enduring -35C temperatures and 50mph headwinds, the team will attempt to keep to the pace set by the Antarctic pioneers, While they will have the benefits of modern equipment and navigational aids, they will not have the ponies and dogs that helped their forebears.
The other members of the Matrix Shackleton Centenary Expedition are:
Patrick Bergel, 36, from London, Shackleton’s great-grandson, who works in advertising.
Tim Fright, 24, from Billingshurst, West Sussex, great-great-nephew of Frank Wild, the only explorer to accompany Shackleton on all his missions. He works as a PA to Cobra Beer founder Lord Bilimoria.
David Cornell, 38, from Andover, Hampshire, a City fund manager and another great-grandson of Boyd-Adams.
The expedition is being used to launch a £10 million Shackleton Foundation, which will fund projects that embody the adventurer’s spirit and hunger for “calculated risk”.
For more information visit http://www.shackletoncentenary.org
