Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton CVO OBE FRGS FRSGS was born February 5, 1874, and died 5 January 5, 1922. He was an Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic. He was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.
Who were Ernest Shackleton’s parents?
His father, Henry Shackleton, tried to enter the British Army, but his poor health prevented him from doing so. He became a farmer instead, settling in Kilkea. The Shackleton family are of English origin, specifically from Yorkshire.
Abraham Shackleton, an English Quaker, moved to Ireland in 1726 and started a school at Ballitore, County Kildare. Shackleton’s mother, Henrietta Letitia Sophia Gavan, was descended from the Fitzmaurice family. Ernest was the second of their ten children and the first of two sons; the second, Frank, achieved notoriety as a suspect, later exonerated, in the 1907 theft of the so-called Irish Crown Jewels, which have never been recovered.