Ernest Shackleton and Robert Falcon Scott: The History of the British Explorers’ Notorious Rivalry during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration

An earlier wave of explorers led to the opening of the New World, and early polar expeditions saw ancient ships of various nations sail along the coastlines of Greenland and within reach of the Arctic and Antarctic continents. Many 19th century figures approached the polar region with an eye to traversing it. Most notable among them was British explorer Sir James Clark Ross, who took the Erebus and the HMS Terror to the southernmost coastlines of the planet. 

Some of the explorers who were involved became household names around the world, including British explorer Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton and Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. Perhaps the one that has become most closely associated with this period is Robert Falcon Scott. Widely referred to as “Scott of the Antarctic,” Captain Scott became an icon of tenacity in the face of incredible adversity, and his final expedition to the South Pole lives on as an example of the nobility of the human spirit, even in the face of utter disaster. A monument to Scott’s persistence still stands at Observation Point, inscribed with the last line of Tennyson’s “Ulysses”: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

Inevitably, as time passed, modern historians further removed from the romanticization of the expeditions began to more closely (and objectively) scrutinize the explorers and their missions. However, in the case of Scott, that has only furthered his renown, because historians still have wildly different opinions of him, from his personality and leadership to the results of his missions, especially his ill-fated final one. Likewise, Shackleton’s place in history is not the one he set out to make, but his extraordinary deeds have made his contributions to early exploration of Antarctica indelible. Despite the victor’s wreath eventually going to another, Shackleton’s name is essential to any discussion of Antarctic exploration.