A junior officer on Robert Falcon Scott’s National Antarctic Expedition (1900–04), he commanded his own expedition in 1909, getting within 155 km (97 miles) of the South Pole (the farthest south anyone had reached at that time). On a second Antarctic expedition (1914–16), Shackleton’s ship Endurance was crushed in the ice. He and his crew eventually reached an island, from which he and five others set out in an open boat on a 1300-km (800-mile) voyage to South Georgia to find help. In 1920 he led a fourth expedition to the Antarctic, but died of a heart attack on South Georgia.