Among the treasures of the Royal Geographical Society’s two million strong collections are over 150 glass and celluloid negatives: the work of Frank Hurley, official photographer to Ernest Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914-1917. These wonderful images have an importance for me beyond their beauty and evocative power, because it was through them that I learned the story of my grandfather’s expedition aboard the Endurance.
I do not remember my father Eddie, Shackleton’s youngest child, ever sitting me down and telling me about his father. Indeed, he hardly knew him, being only 10 years old when Ernest died of a heart attack on January 5, 1922, during the Shackleton-Rowett Quest expedition.
I learned the story by asking about the Hurley photographs on the walls. They were sometimes confusing for a child: “Why was it dark when it was not night?” and “Why did all the men have beards?” I was particularly intrigued by one photograph showing Endurance in the ice, reduced to a skeleton, and the sled dogs sitting around her. I would ask, “What happened to the dogs?” The grownups would never give me a straight answer, and it was not until years later that I was deemed old enough to know the truth, that as on most expeditions of the era, the men killed and ate the dogs when food ran short.
Over the next few days, Hurley and other crew members returned to the wreck of the Endurance to salvage supplies. Diving into the icy water, Hurley rescued much of his photographic equipment, including his glass plate negatives and cinematograph film. ©Royal Geographical Society.
It was not only children who were sometimes confused by a Hurley image. I remember one visitor spending ages contemplating a view of rocky, snow-covered peaks, brooding over a magnificent glacier tumbling into a large fjord, full of huge blocks of floating ice. Eventually, our visitor announced triumphantly, “I know where that is! It is Lulworth Cove!” Hereafter, it was known as Lulworth Cove in the family. In fact, it was South Georgia.
Hurley’s cine film South, originally released in 1919 as In the Grip of the Polar Pack-Ice, was also of significance for me, since it was the first time I saw my grandfather moving and smiling. The film shows astonishing images of the death of the Endurance. Hurley set cameras around her and showed her masts crashing down.
“…During the morning go walking with Wild. We visit a neighboring cavern in the glacier which was adorned with a magnificence of icicles. Fine shawlike stalactites covered the walls and the roof was adorned with curiously carved and footlike stalactites.” –Frank Hurley ©Royal Geographical Society
How did my grandfather come to select Frank Hurley to photograph the Endurance expedition? Hurley had been the official photographer on Douglas Mawson’s Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1911-1913. Shackleton saw Hurley’s 1913 documentary film Life in the Antarctic and decided to recruit him. Departure date was nigh but Hurley—all unaware—was deep in the Australian bush. He thus became almost certainly the only polar photographer to be retrieved by an Aboriginal tracker.
Hurley was a superb photographer, not only for his vision but for his commitment. He would lie down in front of the moving ship and climb high in the mast, burdened with very heavy camera equipment. Results were all. Hurley regarded himself as primarily an artist rather than simply a recorder of events. He did not scruple on occasion to embellish his subject matter and to add or subtract details.
After the return of the expedition, Hurley went back to South Georgia to film penguins and seals. They were a novelty to the public then and Hurley felt his film did not contain enough footage. The success of the film enabled the expedition’s debts to be paid. From December 1919 to May 1920 Shackleton gave public lectures on the film, and twice daily he suffered the pain of seeing his ship lost.
It is not easy to choose my favorite among Hurley’s glass plate negatives. In no particular order, I would suggest those I have already mentioned: “The Endurance Crushed by the Ice” and “Head of Moraine Fjord, South Georgia” (a.k.a. “Lulworth Cove”). The magnificent landscape says it all. It is not possible to leave out “The Long, Long Night,” that masterful and masterly image of Endurance at night. Hurley had set twenty phosphorous flares around her, and the result is an enchanted ship, a vision for the eyes. Finally, I would choose “On the Drifting Flow, Ocean Camp.” Shackleton stands by his tent, shoulder to shoulder with his second-in-command, Frank Wild, with scientists, officers, and crew behind. The men appear quite serene despite the stark desolation of their surroundings. They are living on the ice and below it surges the Weddell Sea. Their future is uncertain, yet the image shows humankind’s infinite adaptability.
One of the most iconic images of the Endurance, this photograph was taken by Frank Hurley at night using flares to create a “spectre ship” effect. ©Royal Geographical Society
An informal group portrait at Ocean Camp with Ernest Shackleton and Frank Wild in the foreground; one of the last photographs taken by Hurley on his Graflex glass plate camera before the heavier and bulky photographic equipment was abandoned on the ice in favor of the more portable Vest Pocket Kodak. ©Royal Geographical Society
The interest in Ernest Shackleton shows no sign of abating. Many polar expeditions have gone forth in his name. There have been Shackleton scholarships; one scholar, Teresa Darbyshire, discovered a new species of marine bristle worm and named it the Micromaldane shackletoni. There is a Shackleton clothing company, which awards a yearly prize for protection of the polar regions. There have been many books on Shackleton’s leadership, which is cited by the military and NASA as well as an American football team. In 2002 the BBC conducted a nationwide poll to determine the “100 Greatest Britons of All Time”; Shackleton came in at number eleven. The same year there was a television drama, Shackleton, starring Kenneth Branagh as my grandfather. In 2016 the Royal Mail issued Shackleton stamps, using the Hurley images, and the Shackleton Symphony, by London-based composer Paul Frith, was recorded by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Since 2017 a Shackleton whisky has been produced.
The James Caird Society—named to honor the lifeboat in which Shackleton and five companions sailed 800 miles (almost 1,300 kilometers) from Elephant Island, where they were marooned after the sinking of the Endurance, to South Georgia to seek help, and existing to celebrate Shackleton’s leadership and achievements—meets twice a year and is a thriving concern. In the Republic of Ireland, the Ernest Shackleton Autumn School has opened the only dedicated Shackleton museum in the world, near his birthplace, Kilkea in County Kildare. There have been many exhibitions worldwide, all graced by the Hurley glass and celluloid negatives—and there will be many more. Some years ago, NASA even named a crater on the moon “Shackleton,” and a crater on Mars “Endurance.” So, I believe it could fairly be said that, with the links to Shackleton reaching beyond the stars, he does indeed cast a long shadow. The part played by Hurley’s negatives is incalculable.
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From The Endurance Photographs A Definitive Visual Record of Shackleton’s Expedition by The Royal Geographic Society. Copyright © 2026. Foreward copyright © 2026 by Alexandra Shackleton. Available from Chronicle Books.
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