Ernest Shackleton - Antarctic explorer who lived in Sydenham London

I grew up in Sydenham, London. I have been up and down Westwood Hill hundreds of times over the years. And this means I would have passed a house with a blue plaque to Ernest Shackleton. Shackleton was an Antarctic explorer. 

Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton, 1874-1922, spent his early years with his family in Ireland, then when he was 10, the family moved to Sydenham in southeast London, and lived at 12 Westwood Hill. The house is next to St Bartholomew's church. 

The London blue plaque was erected in 1928. See a blog on Shackleton in Sydenham.

Shackleton took part in 2 Antarctic expeditions between 1901 - 1909. For the third, he decided to  attempt to cross Antarctica from sea to sea, on the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. This would involve sailing to the Weddell Sea and then a group of men would march across the continent via the South Pole to the Ross Sea. Two ships were involved, Endurance for the Weddell Sea party, and Aurora for the Ross Sea party. Shackleton had a crew of 27 men on Endurance. But disaster struck when they arrived.

Endurance became trapped in the ice of the Weddell Sea. She was stuck throughout the Antarctic winter of 1915. Eventually the ice crushed the ship, and it sank. The 28 men were stranded on the ice. The ice drifted northwards and the men spent months in makeshift camps until the ice broke up. They were then able to use lifeboats that had been salvaged from Endurance to reach the inhospitable, uninhabited Elephant Island. Mapcarta maps -

Shackleton and five other members of the group then made an 800 mile (1,300 km) open-boat journey in the James Caird, a small open lifeboat. After 17 days they reached South Georgia. From there, Shackleton was eventually able to arrange a rescue of the men who had remained on Elephant Island and to bring them home without loss of life.

In early 2023 I was on a cruise around South America and we spent 4 days cruising the Antarctic peninsula. On the last morning as we were leaving the peninsula, we sailed past Elephant Island. 

I managed to get out on deck before 7 am and we were at the south end of the snow covered Elephant Island. It was lovely and sunny but there was a bitterly cold wind. It was an excellent morning for wildlife spotting. We saw a lot of whale blows before and after breakfast, they were fin whales, aka common rorqual, but we hardly saw the animals. The whales were blowing most of the morning, the wildlife team said an estimated 280! There were lots of cape petrels which are pretty black and white. Also Antarctic Prions. Blow of a fin whale -

Endurance glacier (303 m elevation) and the south side of Elephant Island -

We rounded the eastern end of the island and approached Point Wild -

There is a memorial at Point (Cape) Wild, not to Shackleton as I first thought, but to Luis Pardo Villalón. After Shackleton and the 5 men reached the whaling station on South Georgia, there were 2 failed attempts to rescue the men on Elephant Island. For a third attempt, Shackleton asked the Chilean navy to use the steam tug Yelcho. So on 25 August 1916, Yelcho set out from Punta Arenas under the command of pilot Villalón with Shackleton on board. They were lucky as the weather was good in the Drake Passage and the ice was open near Elephant Island. All the men in the camp were well, including the leader Frank Wild. They were rescued on 30 August and got back to Punta Arenas on 3 Sept. Wild's name was used for this cape or point.

Unfortunately on our ship we weren't told about the memorial as we sailed past it. It was only thanks to one of the passengers who had seen it before and alerted us to the fact we were getting near. I spotted it in the far distance. It is almost hidden by The Gnomon, a small rocky island lying off Point Wild. And once we had passed The Gnomon, the memorial was no longer visible. 

The triangular rock in the centre is The Gnomon -

The memorial is below the red arrow -

And this photo of the memorial is by Andrew Shiva / Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0

Note all the penguins around the memorial. As we sailed past, we could see lots more as well as Antarctic fur seals on the coastline. The penguins are Chinstraps with Gentoos on the south coast. 

Three days before going to Elephant Island, we saw Base Yelcho, the Chilean scientific base on the Antarctic Peninsula. It is located on South Bay, Doumer Island and only operational in the summer. The workers came out to look at us, and there were a lot of penguins around the base (on the rocks in front of the base and walking up the hill behind the base). 

Shackleton died of a heart attack in South Georgia on 5 Jan 1922. He was buried on 5 Mar, and 100 years ago that day, Endurance was found. We were at Elephant Island on 20 Feb 2023, Endurance was found 1 year before on 5 Mar 2022. There are lots of articles on the internet about the discovery, including this from the BBC "Endurance: Shackleton's lost ship is found in Antarctic".

After the First World War, in 1919, the James Caird was moved from South Georgia to England. Since 1922 it has been on regular display at Shackleton's alma mater, school, Dulwich College. This college is only a couple of kilometres from Sydenham.