Ernest Shackleton Portrait

Have you ever experienced severe frosts? If you have, you must know that playing with cold is as dangerous as playing with fire. You probably remember how unpleasantly frost bites your nose and painfully pierces your skin with its invisible claws. These sharp hurting pricks do not feel good at all to most of us and they are not something people want to experience over and over. Now imagine how cold it can be in the Antarctic and the Arctic regions where temperature can be as low as record −89.2 °C (−128.6 °F) in Antarctica (the mean annual temperature of the interior being −57°C (−70°F)) and as the Arctic lowest temperature of −68 °C (−90 °F) (average winter temperatures being −40 °C (−40 °F)). It is not a brainer that only a few most brave men can rush into merciless low temperatures attempting to discover and explore the world of eternal snows. Ernest Shackleton was one of those courageous men who challenged severe Antarctic and Arctic frosts.

In fact, Ernest Shackleton was one of the first who undertook a very risky expedition to conquer the South Pole. Although he had not reached the Pole, Shackleton was the first man to attain the latitude of 88°23′S, which was the record at that time, and to make some essential explorations of Antarctic territories. Ernest Shackleton returned several times to Antarctica and explored arctic territories during his life in spite of all the difficulties he experienced in the course of his expeditions. What is the most amazing for me is that a trip to the Antarctic with the equipment of early 1900s was almost as challenging as a voyage to the moon today. Ernest Shackleton was aware of all risks he would face in the realm of deathly frost but it never stopped him from daring to conger the most severe place on our planet. Even his heart disease could not prevent Shackleton from striving to reach unfriendly territories of the Earth’s poles.

The portrait of Ernest Shackleton, a man of outstanding endurance and courage, was drawn by me for the famous men t-shirts series produced by Buffalo and Company.