Ernest Shackleton, celebrated for his extraordinary 1914–1917 Endurance expedition and the near-miraculous survival of his entire crew after their ship was crushed by pack ice, died suddenly at age 47. His death occurred aboard the Quest, anchored at Grytviken, South Georgia, just as a new Antarctic voyage was beginning.
Shackleton had already achieved a peculiar kind of fame by 1922: not for reaching a pole first, but for failing gloriously and bringing every single man home alive. When his ship Endurance was crushed by Antarctic ice in 1915, he led his 27-man crew across ice floes and open ocean in small boats, then made an 800-mile journey in a lifeboat to reach South Georgia and organize their rescue.
Restless in peacetime Britain, he organized one more expedition, the Quest, ostensibly to chart unexplored Antarctic coastline. His health had been failing for years, worn down by scurvy, heart strain, and the sheer accumulated toll of polar exposure, but he refused a full medical exam before departure, reportedly telling the ship's doctor not to worry him with problems he couldn't fix.
He suffered a fatal heart attack in his cabin in the early hours, with his wife's request that he be buried where he died. He now rests in the small cemetery at Grytviken, South Georgia, among the whalers, forever facing south toward the ice that had defined his life.