He also reached farthest south at 88,23 a few years before Amundsen/Scott, and many of the paths he took served as an inspiration for Amundsen.
BUT. He successfully sailed one of the greatest and most perilous ocean journeys ever in recorded history, and rescued every member of his 28-man crew from certain death.
Funny in a cruel way. The world basically forgot about the voyage of the James Caird shortly after he returned home, since WWI had broken out during his time in Antarctica. He wasn't adequately recognized in his lifetime. I think he was one of humanity's finest.
I guess the same can be said about Fridtjof Nansen, arguably the greatest polar explorer of all. And a great man in most other respects.
But alas, he never crossed the north east passage and never reached the north pole.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fridtjof_Nansen
I am bringing it up as an example because it is such a strange thing to say. He succeeded in so many other ways.
I'll also add a quote from Schackleton in a letter to his wife regarding turning back from furthest south with the pole 100 miles away.
“Better a live donkey than a dead lion.”
Much to his wife's dismay.
And he achieved imoressive things in his life.
And considering how little social.places like the US have, wel... Are you sure things a different today?
If his wife was dismayed by his unwillingness to fulfil his promises then we could in fact say he was a failure in that way. Whether you choose to look at it that way or not is of course up to you. At the end of the day he took on the responsibility of supporting other people in a material sense and then chose to prioritise his own good feelings over that support. The issue is of course systemic at the core, in that she was limited in her choices, but he understood this when agreeing to marry.
I agree with you that things in the US are not as good today as they could be in ensuring that people can live independently, but the freedom of women to support themselves is certainly much improved in the last 100 years. I also have to say that the US is not the whole world and Shakleton and his family were in fact normally based in British territories where the modern welfare system is significantly more developed.
It’s incredible feat of human survival. For all 28 men to survive the ordeal, is nothing short of fantastic. For months they were camped on floating sea ice, and then to tack on a 800 mile journey through open, stormy sea in a battered whaling boat, and finally a trek through the interior of a mountainous island to reach a whaling port and rescue, is incredible to say the least. I’d highly encourage people to read his own memoir of it.
Minor but important correction: it was a life boat, much smaller than a whaling boat.
He held the Farthest South record, that is, got the closest to the South Pole, until Amundsen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farthest_South
Robert Falcon Scott loathed him for it.
Scott's last expedition used the route up the Beardmore Glacier through the Transantarctic Mountains that Shackleton pioneered.
He succeeded even if he didn't reach the Pole.
Including the previously mentioned Nansen. Nansen was a generation earlier though, and among other things built the ship Amundsen used.
Amundsen made something difficult look easy. Everyone else made the difficult look - difficult. And survived.
Except for Scott who died.
There is an analogy there with software projects by the way, except for maybe the dying part replaced with general failure.
Only measuring leadership, as im the Ted x(!) talk, with achievement of a stated, and up to then impossible, goals and ignoring a leader who saves everyone from death is at best short sighted, at worst ignorant. Did I mention the guy in the talk is a business professor with a book on leadership?
As a Scandinavian I am pretty surprised by this, and I did not know. But I guess drama sells in the US :)