Macdonald & Lawrence Timber Framing Ltd.

Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton (Feb. 15, 1874 - Jan. 5, 1922) is probably the most fortunate of all the heroic explorers.

Robert Scott (June 6, 1868 - March 29, 1912) attempted to be the first person to reach the South Pole and then died on the way back to achieve a fame best described as tragic nobility.

Amelia Earhart (July 24, 1897 - July 2, 1937) achieved fame as the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. She then disappeared over the Pacific in an attempt to circumnavigate the globe and achieved a kind of wistful, heroic fame.

But Shackleton, born in Ireland and raised in London and a graduate of the merchant navy, lived to bask in the glory of his achievements. He was knighted, famous, feted. And when asked about his failure to reach the South Pole, Shackleton remarked, Better a live donkey than a dead lion.

Shackleton came from a generation of explorers for whom discovery took a back seat to achieving geographic firsts (the first person to reach the South Pole, the first woman to fly the Atlantic).

After all, Scott owes his lasting fame to his the tragic-dramatic failure to come back alive, dying in the cold a mere 20 kilometres from a supply depot with food and fuel. Scott's death completely overshadows his achievement in reaching the South Pole because he was beaten by the better prepared Norwegian (Roald Amundsen (July 16, 1872 - June, 1928), another big achiever of geographic firsts.

Shackleton achieved his initial series of firsts - the first expedition to the magnetic South Pole, the first ascent of Mount Erebus, an active volcano in the Antarctic, and one of the first humans to cross the Trans-Antarctic Mountain Range - during the 1907-1909 Nimrod Expedition, named after its ship.

It's the hut built during this expedition that is now considered a World Monument and was the subject of Gordon Macdonald's recent repair efforts.

When Shackleton returned to the United Kingdom he was proclaimed a hero and for three years basked in the glory of being the man who reached furthest to the south.

By 1914, with the South Pole already done, Shackleton was ready to achieve another first, this time to lead the first team to cross Antarctica by way of the pole.

This time, however, the venture had none of the good luck of the Nimrod Expedition. The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, or Endurance Expedition, if one wants to stay with the ship-naming custom (in this case an appropriate choice), met with early disaster.

The Endurance made it to the Antarctic waters but the ice trapped then broke it. Shackleton and his 27 crew members made it out, hauling three small lifeboats and supplies with them.

All of them eventually made it out alive after Shackleton and five other men managed to sail about 1,500 kilometres across some of the roughest and stormiest waters known to reach the island of South Georgia, about 1,400 kilometres east of the Falkland Islands.

Months later he was able to organize a rescue of the remaining Endurance men left behind on the Antarctic, reaching all 22 of them still alive in August 1916.

It was more than a year later when Shackleton returned to Antarctica to rescue 10 members of a support party, who had been stranded two years, after laying supplies intended to feed Shackleton as he crossed the continent. Three of that party died.

In 1921 Shackleton set out again for the Antarctic, this time a more comfortable voyage aboard the ship Quest, in an attempt to circumnavigate the continent by sea.

On Jan. 4, 1922, on reaching South Georgia, Shackleton stood on the bridge, looking through binoculars when he felt pain in his chest. He died moments later of a massive heart attack at the age of 47. He was buried on South Georgia following the wishes of his wife.