I am glad now to be able to state that, through the generosity of a friend, I can announce that an expedition will start next year with the object of crossing the South Polar continent from sea to sea.

Sir,–It has been an open secret for some time past that I have been desirous of leading another expedition to the South Polar regions. Shackleton did write a letter to the Times, but it read a little differently: The earliest known source is a book published in 1944 called Quit You Like Men by Carl Hopkins Elmore, which in turn led to it appearing at No.1 in the 1949 book The 100 Greatest Advertisements by Julian Watkins, which in turn is quoted in Roland Huntford’s 1985 biography of Shackleton and numerous other books about polar exploration. So far amateur historians have searched The Times archive from 1785 to 1985 (a little over-zealous given Shackleton died in 1922), the entire archive of the South Polar Times, a magazine called The Blizzard, several issues of the Geographical Journal, and the archives of a number of other national and local London newspapers, without success. Mark Horrell summarizes the long trail of evidence dug up by the Arctic Circle group of historians working on tracking down the clip: A modest sum, sure, but more than enough to stoke the interest of historians worldwide. The ad, and the well-loved quote it bore, probably never existed.įor at least the past 12 years there’s been $100 on the line for anyone who can find a copy of the original advertisement. The story has been told and retold, and the quote has been riffed on to no end.īut here’s the problem. The pitch certainly captures a certain glorious spirit-“Ah, when ships were made of wood and men were made of steel…” said one Twitter user in response to the advert being shared by the Shackleton Foundation. In response to his posted ad, Shackleton was supposedly flooded with 5000 responses, men clamoring to take their chances on the icy southern continent.

The famous Shackleton ad, supposedly printed in The Times.

South! by Ernest Shackleton