"For scientific leadership, give me Scott; for swift and efficienttravel, Amundsen; but when you are in a hopeless situation, when thereseems to be no way out, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton."- Sir Raymond PriestleyExploration of Earth’s wilderness areasbecame an international obsession in the late 19th and early 20thcenturies, as economically advantaged nations, in particular Europeanpowers and the United States were well equipped to mount exhaustiveexpeditions. From previously inaccessible forests and jungle country tothe world’s great mountain ranges, adventurers sought out the greatestextremes of climate and terrain in a race to plant the first flag wherehumanity struggled to survive.An earlier wave of explorers ledto the opening of the New World, and early polar expeditions saw ancientships of various nations sail along the coastlines of Greenland andwithin reach of the Arctic and Antarctic continents. Many 19th centuryfigures approached the polar region with an eye to traversing it. Mostnotable among them was British explorer Sir James Clark Ross, who tookthe Erebus and the HMS Terror to the southernmost coastlines of theplanet. Ross is probably the first explorer to realize that Antarcticawas a continent and not just a large chain of islands, and he discoveredthe section of the shelf that was to become the Victoria Barrier. Asiannations also took part in Antarctic exploration when Nobu Shirase ofJapan mounted his 1911 expedition, while Sir Edgeworth David, aWelsh-Australian, was the first person to successfully reach the summitof Mt. Erebus. Richard Evelyn Byrd is believed to be the first pilot tocross the Antarctic continent, and even well past the era of great polarexpeditions, British figures such as Edmund Hillary, conqueror of Mt.Everest, made several expeditions to the South Pole.The era wasuniversally dubbed the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, but itsgreatest story did not stem from the actual achievement of reaching thepole. It was, rather, one of the most profound and heroic rescues everwitnessed that affirmed the empire’s greatness, embodied by the inspiredinsistence and exemplary conduct of Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton. Thisunlikely figure entered the rich man’s world of polar explorationthrough an astonishing persistence and succeeded through the samequality. In fact, it was with Scott that Shackleton participated in hisfirst polar expedition.Shackleton’s place in history is not theone he set out to make, but his extraordinary deeds have made hiscontributions to early exploration of Antarctica indelible. Despite thevictor’s wreath eventually going to another, Shackleton’s name isessential to any discussion of Antarctic exploration, based on personalheroism more than logistical triumphs.