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The Shackleton–Rowett Expedition was the last Antarctic expedition led by Sir Ernest Shackleton (pictured), and the final episode in the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. The venture, lasting from 1921 to 1922, financed by businessman John Quiller Rowett, is sometimes referred to as the Quest Expedition after its ship, a small converted Norwegian whaler. Before the expedition's work could properly begin, Shackleton died aboard ship, just after its arrival at the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia. The major part of the subsequent foreshortened expedition was a three-month cruise to the eastern Antarctic, under the leadership of second-in-command Frank Wild. In these waters the shortcomings of Quest were soon in evidence: slow speed, heavy fuel consumption, a tendency to roll in heavy seas, and a steady leak. The ship was unable to proceed further than longitude 20°E, well short of its easterly target, and its engine's low power was insufficient for it to penetrate far into the Antarctic ice. Following several fruitless attempts to break southwards through the pack ice, Wild returned the ship to South Georgia, after a nostalgic visit to Elephant Island, where he and 21 others had been stranded during Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition six years earlier. Although not greatly regarded in the histories of polar exploration, the Quest voyage is of historical significance, standing at the very end of the Heroic Age and the beginning of the "Mechanical Age" that followed it. (more...)
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