Who Was Ernest Shackleton?
By James Buckley Jr. Illustrated by Max Hergenrother
Grosset & Dunlap
An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA) LLC
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Text copyright 2013 by James Buckley Jr. Illustrations copyright 2013 by Max Hergenrother. Cover illustration copyright 2013 by Nancy Harrison. All rights reserved. Published by Grosset & Dunlap, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. GROSSET & DUNLAP is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) LLC. Printed in the USA.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013032703
ISBN 978-0-698-15974-7
Version_1
This book is dedicated to young explorers eagerly heading out on their own adventures!JB
This book is dedicated to my my wife and son. Thank you for giving me the time to create my art. You are the most loving and supporting family I could ever ask for.MH
Contents
Who Was
Ernest Shackleton?
In 1914, Ernest Shackleton was the leader of a voyage to the South Pole. It was the third time he had made such a trip, but he had not reached the Pole itself yet. He had returned safely from the other journeys. This time, however, he didnt know if he would make it back home to England.
Shackleton sat stranded at the bottom of the world. He and his abandoned ship, the Endurance , were trapped. He watched helplessly from camp as the ship was slowly crushed by ice. He and his crew were more than a thousand miles from human contact. Shackleton had no way to call anyone for a rescue. The men were running out of food and the temperature would only go down.
Once the ship was crushed and then sank, Shackleton and his crew were alone in the icy wasteland of the Antarctic. Over the next six months, they would defy the odds time and again. Under Shackletons leadership, the men battled cold, hunger, ice, wind, and loneliness. They had to find food in a barren land. They made two amazing trips in open boats. They worked together to survive, day after day.
In they end, they won. Shackleton, one of historys most amazing leaders, brought all twenty-seven members of his crew safely back home.
Shackletons courage and his crews incredible journey made him one of the most famous Antarctic explorers ever. How did they ever make it back from such a desolate, cold, and lonely place? And why did they want to go there in the first place?
Curiosity, adventure, and bravery all played a part in the life of a man whose crew called him simply The Boss.
Chapter 1
Off to the Sea!
Ernest Shackleton stood on the bow of his mighty ship. The wide green ocean spread out in front of him. The wind whistled through his hair. That way, men! he called to his crew. Theres adventure ahead! He couldnt wait to see what was out there.
Suddenly, a voice came from the ocean.
Ernest! We have to go!
The young boy was not really on the ocean, but on the huge lawn in front of his house in Ireland. His ship was a giant log in the grass. The voice came from one of his sisters, and it really was time to go. Ernest and his family were leaving for another adventure in a new home.
Ernest Shackleton was born in Kilkea, Ireland, on February 15, 1874. He lived in a large house on an Irish farm until he was six. On his wooden ship or in the nearby woods, Shackleton and his pals spent hours as pirates or ship captains or explorers.
Ernest had a large family. He had a brother named Frank, and he also had eight sisters! Being a farmer with ten kids was very difficult for Shackletons father, Henry. So when Ernest was six, Henry moved the family to the city of Dublin, Ireland.
While his father returned to school to become a doctor, Ernest studied at home. He and his siblings were home-schooled by a governess, who is a live-in teacher.
Ernest found time for adventure, however. Once, he dug a huge hole in their small back garden. He declared that he was going to dig to Australia, on the other side of the world. He got some of his ideas from the Boys Own Paper , a magazine for young readers filled with stories of explorers, soldiers, and exotic foreign lands.
After Henry became a doctor, the family moved to London, England. And for the first time in his life, at age eleven, Ernest had to go to school.
At Fir Lodge, his first school, he was often teased. He and his family were English, though he had been born in Ireland. Because of his Irish accent, the other students called him Micky, an insulting nickname for an Irish person. But Ernest just laughed. In fact, friends and family later called him Micky, too.
At his next school, Dulwich, he played sports such as cricket and boxing. In later years, his friends remembered that he always stuck up for kids who were being teased. He and his friends read sea stories together because thats what Ernest found most exciting. Ernest realized that a regular school was not for him. Later in his life, he wrote, I wanted to be free. I wanted to escape from a routine which didnt at all agree with my nature.... Some boys take to school like ducks to water... but for a few rough spirits, the system is chafing, not good, and the sooner they are pitched into the world, the better. I was one of those.
Soon the call of the sea was too strong. In 1890, at the age of sixteen, with his parents help, Ernest got a job as an apprentice seaman.
For the restless Ernest Shackleton, it was time to leave boyhood behind. Adventure awaited at sea.
