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William.

William.

William.

He gets a bit scared sometimes.

William, this is William.

William is our workshop mascot.

He's been living on the pillar
drill for the last 15 years,

so you can see he's slightly...

..dusty.

William actually makes sure
that we all go home with ten fingers

and two eyes.

My real title is
Object Conservator,

something I genuinely like.

We all rot, we all change.

We try to manage deterioration.

That's really the real essence
of it.

Apply that and that actually
strengthens timber then,

because at the moment it will just
crumble under your chisel.

We started in 1999.

This was again a mad idea.

Why would you do this at the edge
of Europe, as far away

from your clients
as you can ever be?

But we established ourselves as
one of the leading workshops

in the country to preserve
and conserve Irish heritage.

So we've worked really on anything
from Mary's kitchen chair

to the gates of
Kilmainham Gaol here.

The variety is rather large.

You never know what's going
to happen.

That's the great thing.

Isn't it?
Yeah. He agrees.

We've noticed over the last ten
or so years a huge interest

in Shackleton and his story.

And on that basis, we've been
turning towards creating a dedicated

Shackleton museum here in Athy.

We have an opportunity now
to acquire a very special artefact.

The family over in Norway have sent
us across some images they took

a number of years ago,
and this appears to show

what they describe as Shackleton's
cabin in the garden

of their property.

It's actually the cabin
in which Shackleton died

from Shackleton's last ship
called the Quest.

If this is the true cabin
in which he died in,

it's like the Holy Grail of
Antarctic artefacts.

Yes.

Now, the reason why Shackleton's
so important to us here in Athy

is that he was born only seven miles
from this museum in 1874,

in a place called Kilkea.

He's often described as a British
explorer, but actually

he was very much an Irish man.

His family were here since
the 1720s.

If we could have the cabin
which he actually breathed

his last breaths,
it'd be extraordinary for us.

Yeah, I'm speechless.

Shackleton on his way out,
fag in his hand, waving his hat,

big smile on his face.
He was 47.

The Quest expedition,
which was his last and his fourth

expedition, is not well known.

So hopefully it will help
people to understand

what the men went through.

It's actually up in northern Norway,
north of the Arctic Circle.

So the logistics of getting
it back to Ireland are going

to be extraordinarily challenging.

What we're after is to find as many
details as possible to make

absolutely sure that we're dealing
with the original cabin.

As with most subject matters,
only when you start diving into it,

do you actually realise
how deep it is.

Sir Ernest
Shackleton, explorer and poet,

died on an Antarctic voyage
5,000 miles from home.

His ship, the Quest,
drove on into the polar ice.

On 5th January 1922,
Shackleton died in Grytviken,

which is in South Georgia.

Eventually, when the boat returned,
as usual with all the expeditions,

they owed a bit of money.

The boat had to be sold.

The boat went back to Norway
where it came from,

and on the shipyard they took
this cabin off the deck.

This is the shipyard where
my grand grandfather helped.

One of the men working in the
shipyard said, "I'll have that,"

and used it as a garden shed
for 90 years.

And it was passed down in the family
until eventually Ulf Bakke passed

it on to Athy.

You're happy that the cabin
is going to a good home?

Good.

So it's quite a story.

Are you going to be sorry to see
the cabin go from your garden?

Yes, I will be crying.

Yes, crying.
Oh, no.

OK.

The cabin in which
Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton

died has been shipped to Ireland.

It'll be restored in Galway
before being taken to his birthplace

for permanent exhibition.

Wow.

It's great to have her finally here.

And it all seems very healthy.

Now we can start the work.

So the other half, that half
was occupied by Frank Wild,

his second in command, and then
Shackleton was on this side.

Everybody would expect him to die
in a crevasse or being eaten

by strange animals, or drowning.

But he just died in his bed.

And pretty much the procedure
with objects coming in

are very similar.

So the first thing we do
is to investigate, just by looking.

I mean, just go in there
and spend many hours in there

and to really look at every part.

How is it constructed,
make lots of sketches.

A lot of our clients have a very
deep and intimate connection

with their objects.

I don't get personally connected.

Sometimes you might get
carried away.

Luckily, I always try to hold
myself back and just say,

"Listen, it's just a wooden box."

Especially on this subject matter,
it's heavily romanticised.

We spend many, many, many
weeks in the research -

base everything I see and find
on evidence.

Two inches there.

It's not often that I can actually
stand inside an object.

I'm really looking forward
to this...journey.

The quest of the Quest.

We were very lucky that we had
a very good image of the interior

of Shackleton's cabin
in the Scott Polar Research

Institute in Cambridge.

This photo was definitely
stage set for this purpose.

I don't think his bed linen
would be that immaculately white.

So I think this must have been at
the beginning of the journey,

or very early on.

It's a rectangular space.

The bunk on the left.

And straight ahead,
you have a little cabinet

with an elliptical mirror,
and on the right-hand wall

is a bookcase.

Shackleton was a keen reader
and he encouraged all his crew

as well to read.

Underneath it is a wash stand
and there's another very small

little glass support,
I would call it, next to his bed.

So I know that the boards,
the backboards, are 160mm,

so I can transfer those measurements
and, in the end, measure everything

within the cabin and that will help
us then to actually rebuild

these pieces to scale and make sure
it looks pretty much identical

to the image.

So let's make it 32 inches.

Without that photograph, we wouldn't
even have a journey, I think.

It would be just a garden shed
and I would not be involved

in inventing something
that could have been in there.

Now, the depth of it. Erm...

Often you find something
and that gives you a lead

and you just keep on going.

It's a bit like a crime scene
investigation, you could call it.

So as part of the research,
we recently found this new source.

Just by pure coincidence, I found
this amazing blog which followed

the Quest expedition.

Miraculously, some of these images
appeared

that I had never seen before,

and cos there's only a very small
amount of images available.

John Quiller Rowett,
the man who actually financed

the Quest expedition,
visited the boat in Southampton

in the shipyard,
and his visit was documented

with these photographs.

Really interesting and very,
very important documents.

And to have them is just fantastic.

I was so surprised that
I contacted the man behind it.

It's actually the grandson of
John Quiller Rowett, Jan Chojecki.

The fact that after 100 years
this has now come to light

is very exciting.

So your grandfather knew
Shackleton from Dulwich College.

They weren't in the same year.

They were two years different.

So Shackleton was two years
senior to my grandfather.

So they weren't best buddies,
you know, that kind of thing.

But they walked the same
route to school.

Rolling forward to 1920,
which is when Shackleton

really had the urge
to get away again.

So he planned an expedition
to the Arctic to go

in summer of 1921,
Northern Hemisphere,

Come the beginning of May,
he still hadn't

The funding, yeah.

You know?

And really getting too late to go
north in that summer.

He approached my grandfather
and said, "Can you help?"

My grandfather was, by that time,
a wealthy, established businessman

in wine and spirits.

June 2nd, there's a dinner
at The Savoy, and on this menu card

penguins are drawn,

which says they're going south.

Ah.
Because it's too late to go north.

And obviously,
he has sufficient funds as well,

because it was, I mean,
a very large amount of money.

Yeah. The equivalent
these days is about five million.

And it was a big commitment.

The late decision
to cancel the Arctic,

go to the Antarctic, but also
puts pressure on the timing.

Because you've got to get ready
in three months to go south.

The Quest, which is by this time
being fitted for the north,

has got to be refitted to go south.

As you said, they were under
enormous time pressure

to get this all together.

And it's quite evident as well
in the techniques they used,

how they jointed the materials.

I don't think it ever got
properly ocean tested.

I think the excitement, adventure,
that's what they signed up for.

He was lecturing twice daily
on his old exploits

and it was all getting
a bit of a bore.

Shackleton was very keen
to get away.

So this is the lock
of Shackleton's cabin.

Pretty much standard door locks.

Every time he grabbed
this door handle

I'm sure he was relieved,
having a bit of sleep.

The story was told to me when
I collected this cabin in Norway.

The schoolkids would hear the story
about Shackleton and the connection

with Amundsen, and they would
just go along and paint this.

You could say it's not the original
paint, but it definitely helped

reducing the amount of moisture
that would go into the timbers,

so therefore there
would be less chance of rot.

This is just a very small paint
flake, but I'm sure

it's very representative of all
the paint that was in this area.

Some people say this is destructive,

but I think on this object
it's a responsible thing.

Because we only have black and white
photographs,

it will tell us quite
a lot about its pasts.

The first layer is kind
of a greyish, light greyish layer,

with lots of black pigment
particles.

There's some orange particles
in there.

Hmm, how did they get in there?

We go up, there's one more layer
which is kind of a light grey,

and then there's a very thin
blue layer.

And then the top is the white,
which I would say

is the modern white

the kids from the school
actually applied.

So the original colour was just
a kind of a lightish grey.

Wow. That's interesting.

Also the other layer
like the light blue,

we have to think about that.

This cabin was used as a garden shed
for another 90 years afterwards.

They painted it light blue as well.

Those paint layers are kind
of an evidence of that.

We do that quite a lot on objects
to actually help us to understand

what happened to these objects
and how they were treated.

We didn't have many vinyls at home,
but it's amazing, that picture,

obviously, I must have looked
at it a lot, very strong

in my memory.

The words are actually
etched in my brain.

And even though it's 40 years ago,
I think I can remember it.

It's called The Race to the South
Pole by Scott and Amundsen.

So Scott was the Englishman
and Amundsen was the Norwegian.

Scott embraced a more modern
way with motorised sleds.

Amundsen being a Norwegian totally
embraced the Inuit technology.

So he had a dog sled, skis,

his outfits were made
out of sealskin.

Scott obviously had a lot of
technical problems, and when Scott

then arrived at the South Pole,
he saw the Norwegian flag.

Amundsen was there before Scott.
I think about four weeks earlier.

Amundsen is known as the first
man on the South Pole.

Scott and his crew
never made it back.

So it's actually quite dramatic.

I would say for an eight-year-old
it would be quite touching,

I would say.

It's a lot about death
and suffering.

But again, they all have this goal
of getting to a place.

One man who achieved his goals
in the modern era

is Sir Ranulph Fiennes.

He's regarded as one of the greatest
living explorers.

And one of his many accomplishments
was that he became the first man

to cross the Antarctic continent
unsupported.

I brought some images
because I have some very specific

questions and I would really
appreciate your opinion on this.

OK.

So this is the cabin which they just
put on the deck because the Quest

was relatively small.

So Frank Wild was next-door.

So you have the partitioning
wall in the middle.

So when I measured, the position
of that wall was to the millimetre

accurately in the centre
of this cabin.

It's quite, I thought, significant
that everything was built roughly

except for the placing of the wall,
which was ultra accurate,

Right.

He had the most remarkable ability
to keep worrying about other people

when he himself was suffering
dreadfully.

Even if he was called the boss,
there was a lot of equality

there and respect.

So the Endurance
was his third expedition,

the one before the Quest.

By that time
the South Pole was reached.

So the next big step would
have been to cross

the entire Antarctic continent.

Which was a massive undertaking.

The Endurance got caught
in the pack ice,

which was particularly bad
that year.

And they were then sitting on an
ice floe for over ten months.

I mean, you can't even imagine
what life would be.

Shackleton was an amazingly
strong character.

In terms of leading men under
miserable conditions, brilliant.

What they would give him
was an almost automatic reaction

to what you would give
the man back that would totally

Yeah, the boss.

And that developed slowly.

It wasn't just because one
person called him the boss.

They all began, after the sinking of
the ship, to realise that his real

test he was succeeding in.

Eventually the ice floe did break up
and they managed with lifeboats

to just about get to Elephant
Island, which is a tiny

little heap of rocks.

He selected five people,
among them Tom Crean,

that would come with him with
one boat with James Caird

to try to get help.

The only option was to sail
to South Georgia.

It's about 800 nautical miles.

One of the roughest oceans
in the world.

The real torture
that he went through,

even a few hours in that
small boat,

in those conditions trying
to survive.

The journey took 17 days
and they made it...

..but they landed on the wrong side
of the island.

Then they had to climb
three glaciers.

I mean, if you think about that,
no equipment or very little -

just a rope and a couple of nails
in their shoes.

And then the mad dash,
made it across and made it

to the whaling station
in Grytviken.

By then, the whole world thought
already they were all dead and lost.

Eventually, after a long ordeal,

managed to save the rest
of the crew.

The story goes that they never, ever
doubted that Shackleton

actually would come back
to save them.

You could see when he came back
to the country

that the people loved him
as a hero.

Generally, I think everybody agrees
that his achievements,

being the first or having done
something that is unique

were not that great.

But on any of his four expeditions,
none of his men died.

His polar contemporary,
Sir Raymond Priestley, commented,

"For scientific leadership,
give me Scott;

"for swift and efficient travel,
Amundsen;

"but when you are in a hopeless
situation,

"when there seems to be no
way out,

"get on your knees and pray
for Shackleton."

I'm taking this tar paper off
because that was put on

somewhere in the '80s.

And that will also give us a good
idea of how healthy the roof is,

because this is really the only
unknown part of the cabin,

which we haven't investigated yet.

Oh, wow.
That's very interesting.

The planking is actually corked,

so it's a raw cotton they hammer
into that groove.

And they do that with a lot of
force, and sometimes they do that

two or three times and put these
layers on top

of it and compress them really hard.

And that way you make the seam
waterproof

and it looks like the original
caulking,

that same rope would have
been on the crest.

Most likely.

This is still the exact same timber
as the rest of the cabinets.

Just ordinary pine, bog-standard
structural timbers

they would have had in the shipyard.

Delighted, because I was afraid that
there might be some rot there,

but it's pretty much perfect.

So I'm trying to make the ellipse
mirror for the cabinet.

I mean, you can do this on a
computer as well, but in objects

conservation, I think it's good
to go through the techniques

of how it was done originally.

I would say Aristotle did this
2,000 years ago.

These are leftover shelves
from an historic library

that was built in 1903.

So I think it's a perfect
material to recycle.

Authentication.
Well, it's closer to the real one.

I have this keen interest
in materials,

and wood is one of those
fascinating materials.

This is the door for the
small cabinet

that's made out of recycled
material.

The idea behind it is not to fake
it, but to have something

that is close to the original.

This was an Edwardian wardrobe,
but it was all solid mahogany.

Whenever I see a skip anywhere
in the country,

I generally stop and go for it.

I don't know what people
throw away,

but maybe they just don't
realise what it is.

But if you know your materials
and your art history a bit,

I think you can recognise
things quite well.

So there was always something
visible on the ceiling,

some kind of pattern, and it looks
like an embossed wallpaper,

which is really interesting.

So I'm just trying to find out more
because that pattern

seems very, very strange.

The cabin was built really quickly,
they had that very little time,

so why would you spend your time
putting a wallpaper on the ceiling?

Maybe it was on purpose,
maybe it was just random.

Maybe it was Shackleton's favourite
wallpaper. I don't know.

Having read a lot about Shackleton,

there's a lot of speculation
of who he is,

what kind of man he was,
and I have the great opportunity

to actually meet
Alexandra Shackleton,

Ernest Shackleton's granddaughter.

Hopefully, be able to understand
a bit more about, who was he?

Yeah, exactly - that's...
that's really the big question.

This is one of my favourite
photographs of my grandfather.

I think you can tell from his
photograph he wrote poetry.

At one stage, he set out the
qualities regarded

for polar explorer -
Yeah.

Optimism, patience, idealism,

and, finally, he put courage.

He thought everyone had courage.
Yeah.

He entered the merchant Navy
as a 16-year-old,

in the days of sailing ships.

And when do you think his interest
for the polar regions started?

My grandfather realised that though
he loved the merchant marine,

it wasn't really going to be
enough for him.

He'd heard about Scott's expedition,
Discovery Expedition.

Another reason, the oldest reason in
the world, he met my grandmother

and want to make his name
so that her father

would think he's a suitable
son-in-law.

So he applied and got the post,
he was Third Officer on Discovery.

So Discovery was followed by the
Nimrod Expedition,

which was the second expedition
in 1907,

which was led by Shackleton himself.

Yes, but he did not get what
he most wanted -

he did not get to the Pole.

We reached the
point within 97 geographical miles

of the South Pole.

The only thing that stopped us from
reaching the actual point

was the lack of 50 lb of food.

Possibly could have got there,
but they'd all have died there.

And his decision to turn back
is regarded as one of

the great decisions
of polar history.

We're all defined by our priorities.

It's quite clear from then,
his priority was his men.

He tried to settle down -
he got married,

became Secretary of the Royal
Scottish Geographical Society.

It was quite a stultified
institution in those days.

I don't think it would have
suited him.

The early Shackleton once said
to his little sister,

"You cannot think what it is
like to tread where no-one

"has trodden before."

I mean, Shackleton had several
amazing women around him,

including his wife, Emily.

She pretty much kept
the home ship afloat.

I think she really loved the fact
that he was doing successful things

that he really liked doing.

She must have enjoyed the
reflected glory from that.

But, when he was living in the home
and then in his office in London

trying to get an expedition going,
and when things weren't going well,

he took to the bottle...
Yeah.

..and became quite unpleasant
in domestic life.

I do not think he was a saint
or a hero,

which some people tend to think
their relatives are.

But I do think he was
a very great man.

He definitely...

..couldn't take inactivity for long,

because he had what she called
the wonder fire,

the wanderlust,
the call of the wild.

"My love, I'll be back soon.

"As soon as it's finished, my love,
that will be the last one."

"No more."

Some people would say, you shouldn't
go on when you've got a family.

It's selfish.

In September 1921, he left from
St Katharine Docks

and the records say that the
shores of the Thames

were thronged with people
waving him goodbye.

Of course, nobody knew that
was the last goodbye.

After each of his expeditions,

he told my grandmother he
wouldn't go again.

But eventually she realised
that was not so.

And I believe she wrote in her
diary once,

"I realise you cannot cage
an eagle in a barnyard."

It was always this perpetual move
towards the next big project,

going somewhere else where
he was the happiest.

So I don't think he ever wanted
a civilian life.

The amount of objects left
from the Quest Expedition

are very, very limited.

One of them, of course,
is the cabin.

Another really significant
one is the Crow's Nest.

This barrel still exists in the
All Hallows Church in London.

Jayne Pierce is the Curator at
the South Georgia Museum

and will hopefully help me
to understand a bit

more about the boss himself.

So here it is.

Oh, wow!

The barrel.

Isn't it fab?

Fantastic.

Do you think that this barrel is
as special for being used

as a crow's nest on a ship,
or is it just a barrel?

I think it's just a bog-standard...
Just a barrel?

..barrel, because you can see
there's a plug there.

The plug was here to fill it.
Holding liquid?

Yes, exactly.
OK.

And also, you can see the grooves
here that would have had

the lid set in.
Right.

So it definitely had a lid,
and, of course, it would have been

quite difficult to use
Interesting.

So it's just a barrel that would
have been adapted, OK.

It would have been very unpleasant
to sit in this, I would say.

At that height, I mean,
just the movement,

imagine this is 25 metres up
in the air.

On a very unstable boat.

Swaying.

Ooh.

Seriously strong stomach.

On the journey south,

the Quest was hit by many
really bad storms.

Late decision - cancel the Arctic,
go to the Antarctic.

As soon as it got out into rough
water, which, you know,

wasn't what an Arctic sealer was
designed to do.

It was - that's a coast hugger.

The weight of the propeller
shifting around

threw the crankshaft
out of alignment.

If the whole thing's not working,
that's what started happening

pretty quickly in the Bay of Biscay.

And that led to all the problems
and that led to the stress

that Shackleton piled on himself.

And they eventually travelled to
Rio de Janeiro to do some repairs,

and they ended up being there
for about four weeks.

And so their whole schedule
was knocked off course.

When they got to Rio to fix the boat
for the third time,

George Hubert Wilkins, who was
the naturalist on the boat,

he was sent to ahead to South
Georgia to start doing

some specimen collecting
and research.

Wilkins, I know, was disappointed
with the lack of interest

that he felt the expedition
had in the science.

You think it might have not been
well communicated, or you think...?

I don't think the leadership's
heart was in it.

And there was a little bit of
OK.

By the time they got to Rio,
I think Shackleton

had got the sniff of the Antarctic
and wanted to beeline it

and so sent the scientists on ahead.

They didn't really want to
go to South Georgia

because South Georgia had been
surveyed quite a lot.

In fact, in Wilkins' diary,
he says, "it's been done".

Shackleton really wanted to get
to South Georgia.

If he got a couple of people
down there,

they're going to have to
follow them.

The Quest Expedition never got
really a huge amount of exposure.

His work schedule was nothing
compared with the bravado

of what he had planned previously.

It wasn't going to be that
No.

They were going to sail the
southern seas,

but it's not going to the pole.

Even after the Endurance, where they
were on the verge of death,

a lot of them actually
signed up again.

Among them, of course, was Frank
Wild, his second in command,

who actually was his next door
neighbour in the cabin.

Hussey, the famous man
with his banjo.

Then went Macklin, his doctor.

By this point,
he wasn't very well.

He was a heavy drinker,
heavy smoker.

It was well known
that he was suffering.

He was drinking more and smoking
pretty well nonstop.

So I don't think it was a great
preparation for, you know,

an Antarctic excursion.

And he was desperate to get south.

It was almost as if he was
holding on.

So my research on the wallpaper,
I contacted Lincrusta.

They're in business for over 100
years, and they're doing

very luxurious wall coverings.

Ooh...

Very nice.

Michael from Lancaster found this
wall with the wallpaper

somewhere in London, and he made
this rubber mould.

So he took a kind of
an imprint of it.

To have a mould to make wallpaper,
of course,

is something very, very special.

And until this project, I had never
heard of it, that that even exists.

To even find the wallpaper
was pure luck.

This whole project, I think,
is one of those magic projects

where everything comes together.

All the decision making on objects
needs to be based on

rock solid foundations of
ethical consideration.

I could change it in a way
that this object

becomes something different.

And that's something I think is
quite serious because that way,

you actually change history and
the integrity of the object.

Is that off the book case?

Well, to the photograph, this was
just nailed together.

So we're going to do the same thing.
So nothing fancy.

Got everything positioned
so very soon we can place them all

to the millimetre accurate
where they used to be.

So now it's just a matter of
getting the furniture all finished.

Because we're dealing with objects
that represent us and our culture,

they're really worthy of
every consideration.

Then next to the bunk, they would
have had the little side table

with the three holes in it,
with the water carafe

and the funny seed inside.

Some people say it's a spud
because of his Irish background,

but I think that's very thick

to actually come up
with that kind of idea.

The first sheet of anaglypta.

Wow. Turned out perfect.

And it's nice and flexible as well.

We're going to make about ten of
those, which should be sufficient

to cover the entire ceiling
in the cabin.

In perspective, this would be up
on the wall and you would be looking

into the cabin, and that looks
pretty much like the bookcase.

I have an oil lamp here.

They had electricity on the ship.

This was, I assume, a backup.

And this is roughly the same age

but of course,
it was not the original one.

And it's sitting on a gimbal.

It's very, very likely that

this was the light
he used to write in his diary,

including his last entry.

The Scott Polar Research Institute
is an absolutely amazing collection

of very significant and important
documents and objects.

And I'm here to meet Naomi Bonham,
the institute's archivist.

So, having read through his diaries,

what kind of character
do you think he was?

His diaries are all very different,
so you get different sides to him

depending on which diary
you would be reading.

The Quest Diary is, his final diary,
is much more of a personal diary.

Just looking at it, you can tell
it's not the sort of sledging diary

that he would carry around
with him in his pocket.

This is one to be written
Yes.

Possibly at the end of each day.
Yes.

So you think it's more reflective
OK.

All explorers used pencil
because the inks can run.

And there is, of course, only
Yes.

On the 1st of January, we've got,
"Rest and calm after the storm."

The last days of 1920 had not
been good weather-wise for them.

And it mentions Christmas Day in
the raging gale seemed out of place.

1st of January 1922.

The year has begun kindly for us.

I dared not venture to hope
that today would be as it was.

Anxiety has been probing deeply
into me

for until the end of the year,
things have gone awry.

At 1pm, we passed our first berg.

The old familiar sight aroused in me

memories that
the strenuous years had deadened.

Ah, me. The years that have gone
since in the pride of young manhood

I first went forth to the fight.

I grow old and tired,
but must always lead on.

He might have known
that he wasn't healthy,

that this might be his last journey.

Out of almost despair
he kind of runs off

after maybe reflecting on his life,

"I haven't really achieved any major
things" like his colleagues did.

Certainly not in the best of health,

he would have known that,
but still wanting to carry on.

Going back to the Antarctic in a way
is perhaps like going home,

which in a way becomes more poignant

considering it's literally
his last few days.

3rd of January, 1922.

Another beautiful day.

Fortune seems to attend us
this new year.

There are two points
in the adventure of the diver -

one, when a beggar
he prepares to plunge,

one, when a prince,
he rises with his pearl.

And then January the 5th,
an empty page here.

Alexandra Shackleton will be coming

and she has never seen
the cabin like this.

So quite exciting to see
what she thinks about it.

By the time they got to
the Grytviken, the whaling station,

it was the 4th of January.

Everyone was super happy.

Shackleton came out of
this dark cloud and was joyous.

In the middle of the night
Shackleton was restless,

he couldn't sleep and
he called in Macklin, the surgeon,

about 2, 2:30am.

And then he suffered
a huge heart attack and died

in his cabin on the Quest.

There we are.

So this one is
the ship's log for the Quest.

Wow.

"3am. Sir Ernest Shackleton
died suddenly of heart failure.

"Drs Macklin and McElroy
in attendance."

Yes.

Hmm.

So they took his body off the ship.

They then left and went on to
Antarctica to try and carry out

what was remaining
of the expedition.

And then the idea was that

the body was then going
to be taken back to Britain.

Meanwhile, news had finally
travelled back to the UK,

back to his wife in London.

Emily decided
he ought to lie in South Georgia,

the scene of his greatest triumphs

and the place that
mattered so much to him.

So they had a lovely small service
in the church at Grytviken

with lots of whalers present.

His grave is very different
from the norm.

He is pointing south towards
Antarctica, to where it's thought

his soul and his heart
truly wanted to be.

I think it's always important as
well to have both feet on the ground

and just say, listen,
it's just a wooden box.

That's what it will always be.

But in the last 20 years,
this was definitely, I think,

physically, mentally,
the most intense project.

Normally, as I said, I never get
personally attached to objects,

but with the cabin,
I definitely had that.

I think it's something
that touches me emotionally.

So that cabin, I think, is quite
a bit more than just a garden shed.

To give John Quiller Rowett
a lot more credit is, I think,

quite important, because without
It wouldn't have happened.

He would be very disappointed
with the way that it wrapped up

the way it did, because
it didn't execute. It didn't finish.

They didn't manage to do much.

They did some geological work,
some meteorological work.

They were hit by bad storms again.

And so they made the decision

to just head back to South Georgia.

And they of course didn't know
that he was by then buried.

But I'm sure the crew was,
I would say, maybe quite happy?

Yes.
..at his grave. Yeah.

They decided to then make a cairn
as a memorial to Shackleton.

And it still stands today
on South Georgia

on a place called Hope Point.

Ernest Shackleton's death has been
described as marking the end

of what's called the heroic age
of Antarctic exploration.

Back at that time,
the polar era was over.

Shackleton was definitely
the last accepted hero.

Wow. Gosh.

And the bunk.

Just to help you, there's
the famous image which was taken

from exactly the position you're in
Amazing. It looks wonderful.

Oh, this is so
beautifully done, Sven.

I think he would have been
astonished and amused

at the enormous amount of interest
there is 100 years later.

Yeah.

I'm sure you're aware what
actually happened on the night.

Hussey had his banjo with him,
so Hussey actually, on the evening

of his death, sat actually there

and played a lullaby.
I didn't know that.

But what I always wondered is

when Shackleton was lying
in this cabin and looking up,

at the moment when he passed...

..what his last thoughts
would have been.

It's absolutely evocative
of how it was

just a little over a century
since my grandfather died in it.

The night Shackleton died, as
I came off watch, passing his cabin,

he called out to me.
He said, "Huss, I can't sleep.

"Play me some of the old tunes, will
you? They always help me to sleep."

So I played him a lullaby.

How lovely.

Yes.

You know what his last words were?
Last entry in his diary?

4th of January, 1922.

At last, after 16 days
of turmoil and anxiety,

on a peaceful sun shining day,

we came to anchor in Grytviken.

A wonderful evening.

In the darkening twilight.
I saw a lone star hover,

gemlike, above the bay.