ONE CENTURY after Sir Ernest Shackleton took to a Dublin stage to describe how he almost reached the South Pole, the event is due to be recreated early next week in the very same venue.
The Irish adventurer’s recorded voice and a presentation by direct descendant Jonathan Shackleton will mark the anniversary in the National Concert Hall on Monday night. It was in the Earlsfort Terrace concert hall, formerly University College Dublin, that Shackleton described the Nimrod expedition of 1907-1909 on December 14th, 1909.
The Irish Times Weekly, of December 18th, 1909, reported on his original lecture. Extracts from this will form part of Monday night's programme, along with poetry by TS Eliot, Derek Mahon and others, and music composed by Michael Holohan.
Shackleton's Nimrodexpedition had travelled over 1,000 miles, run out of rations and experienced a series of blizzards when the Irishman decided it was "better to be a living donkey than a dead lion" and retreated – just 97 miles from target.
The Irish Times Weeklyreported that his Dublin lecture was "presided over" by "His Excellency the Lord Lieutenant", and "every available seat in the hall" was occupied. The lecture was "profusely illustrated throughout by cinematograph views, depicting the various incidents of note encountered by the voyagers on their long, exciting and perilous journey", the newspaper said.
Five years later, in 1914, Norwegian Roald Amundsen became the first man to reach the southernmost point of the globe. It took almost a century for an Irishman to continue on where Shackleton had left off. Kerry mountaineer Mike Barry reached the South Pole on January 21st, 2004, and a subsequent Irish expedition was led by Cork adventurer Pat Falvey.
This year Irishman Mark Pollock became the first blind person in the world to make it, supported by Dubliner Simon O’Donnell and Norwegian Inge Solheim.
