Unsung Heroes: Exploring the Amazing Lives of Lesser-Known Antarctic Explorers

Frank Wild, Tom Crean, and Douglas Mawson braved the world’s most unforgiving frontiers with ingenuity, courage, and exceptional leadership.

A photograph taken by Frank Hurley during Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition in 1919. Frank Hurley/Public domain

The Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration—it sounds like a bit much, doesn’t it? Somewhat pretentious, or at least self-congratulatory. It was a unique era that lasted from the end of the 19th century into the 1920s. The explorers’ goal certainly fit the name: to be the very first humans in history to reach places frozen and forbidding, even to the bottom of the planet.

I mean, what makes a man or woman a hero, anyway? But these explorers did some rather amazing things. In expedition after expedition, they surged south into totally undiscovered territory. Over a span of fewer than three decades, whether out of lunacy or boredom, they boarded rickety wooden sailboats and navigated, literally, to the ends of the earth.

The Greats

Irishman Ernest Shackleton, whose name inevitably rises to the top of these lists, was always known as “The Boss.” He looked every bit the part with his trademark thousand-yard stare and a square jaw that, in black-and-white photos from the era, looks like it could cut through granite.