2-693-844 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

'The Christmas Camp on the Plateau. The figures from left to right are [Jameson] Adams, [Eric] Marshall and [Frank] Wild. The frost can be seen on the men's faces', December 1908, (1909). Expedition members stand in front of a pyramidal tent on a flat snow field. A loaded sledge stands next to the tent, a union jack flies from one flag pole. A theodolite stands on a tripod to one side, ice-axes stand in the snow. Anglo-Irish explorer Ernest Shackleton (1874-1922) made three expeditions to the Antarctic. During the second expedition, 1907-1909, he and three companions established a new record, Farthest South latitude at 88°S, only 97 geographical miles (112 statute miles, or 180 km) from the South Pole, the largest advance to the pole in exploration history. Members of his team also climbed Mount Erebus, the most active volcano in the Antarctic. Shackleton was knighted by King Edward VII for these achievements. He died during his third and last 'oceanographic and sub-antarctic' expedition, aged 47. Illustration from The Heart of the Antarctic, Vol. I, by E. H. Shackleton, C.V.O. [William Heinemann, London, 1909]