“I always feel as long as I am doing the work and getting through the fight that all is well.”
— letter to Emily Shackleton
[Upon Shackleton’s return to England and the Great War, reception was markedly… subdued. Even, and perhaps especially after, the war’s end, his speaking engagements were sparsely attended. Survival was not a popular theme after the devastation of WWI; death took narrative precedence for decades. The story of the Endurance held interest for only a relative few until the very end of the 20th century, when audiences began to return in droves, hungry for more books, films, websites… even reenactments (including, of course, @EShackleton).
Were he alive today, the Boss would be pleased, no doubt. Speaking engagements would not be difficult to find, nor, one suspects, would money. But even more than enjoying his fame, he would be itching to dart away from civilization, back to the inhospitable and the unknown, to venture onward. To boldly go where no man has gone before.]
A crossing of South Georgia Island was not attempted again until 1954, when the South Georgia Survey was completed.
The first crossing of Antarctica occurred in 1957-58:
The 1955–58 Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition (CTAE) was a Commonwealth-sponsored expedition that successfully completed the first overland crossing of Antarctica, via the South Pole. It was [also] the first expedition to reach the South Pole overland for 46 years, preceded only by Amundsen’s and Scott’s respective parties in 1911 and 1912. […] The second crossing of the continent did not happen until 1981.
Books, films, websites:
There’s no shortage of Shackleton! See the Resources tab on this website for what I recommend.