Origins
Shackleton had been a junior officer on Scott's first Antarctic expedition in the Discovery. He had been sent home on the relief ship Morning in 1903, after a physical collapse during the expedition's main southern journey. Scott’s verdict was that he "ought not to risk further hardships in his present state of health". Shackleton felt this physical failure as a personal stigma, and on his return to England he was determined to prove himself, in the words of Discovery's second-in command Albert Armitage, as "a better man than Scott". He nevertheless declined the opportunity of a swift Antarctic return as chief officer of Discovery's second relief ship Terra Nova, after helping to fit her out; he also helped to equip Uruguay, the ship being prepared for the relief of Otto Nordenskjold’s expedition, stranded in the Weddell Sea. During the next few years, while nursing intermittent hopes of resuming his Antarctic career, he pursued other options, and in 1906 he was working for the industrial magnate Sir William Beardmore as a public relations officer.
According to Roland Huntford, Shackleton's pride had been further wounded by the references to his physical breakdown made in Scott’s The Voyage of the Discovery, published in 1905. It then became his personal mission to return to the Antarctic and outperform Scott. He began looking for potential backers for an expedition of his own; his initial plans appear in an unpublished document dated early 1906. These include a cost estimate of £17,000 (updated value £1,330,000) for the entire expedition. He received his first promise of financial backing when early in 1907 his employer, Beardmore, offered a £7,000 loan guarantee (updated value £550,000). With this in hand, Shackleton felt confident enough to announce his intentions to the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) on 12 February 1907. One reason for Shackleton's sense of urgency was the knowledge that the Polish explorer Henryk Arctowski was planning an expedition, which was announced at the RGS on the same day as Shackleton's. In the event, Arctowski's plans were stillborn.
Read more about this topic: Nimrod Expedition
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