Quest: Shackleton's Last Ship & The End of the Heroic Age
by John Geiger
Toronto: Sutherland House, 2026 ($34.95 CAD; $32.95 USD)
Reviewed by Russell A. Potter
The Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton stands almost alone amidst the many figures of the "Heroic Age" of Polar exploration: while he did not always succeed in achieving his ambitious geographical goals, his spirit of perseverance -- and the fact that, as the song goes, "he never lost a man" -- have given him a fame more enduring than any other figure of that time. Every year in his home town of Athy, Ireland, the annual Shackleton Autumn School celebrates his achievements, and presents new work by historians that illuminate the many and varied aspects of his career.
His little ship Quest, though, was for many non-specialists a sort of footnote -- for, as fate would have it, he was never to command it on his hoped-for circumnavigation of Antarctica, falling ill and dying just as the ship came to the shores of the great frozen continent. The ship herself went on to carry men with many other purposes -- sealing, minesweeping, and as a cargo vessel -- before she sank after being holed by an iceberg off the coast of Labrador in 1962. And yet, as the final vessel of a legendary commander, she still evoked strong sentiments; when, in 2024, her cabin -- which had been removed during re-outfitting, turned up in use as a garden shed in Norway, a plan was hatched to have it brought to Athy and restored, which it now has been; it's the central feature of the "Shackleton Experience" museum there.
And yet, with the ultimate fate, and true location of the vessel herself unknown, the story felt incomplete. It was at this point that John Geiger -- well-known for his seminal books on the lost Franklin expedition in the Canadian Arctic -- came into the picture. He knew, of course, that the odds were high -- the cost of mounting a search in the Labrador Sea, the difficulty in locating a wreck whose precise position was uncertain, and the odds of being able to obtain meaningful and definitive imagery of the vessel -- all augured against such an effort. And yet he knew, having been a part of the search that finally located Franklin's flagship HMS "Erebus" in 2014, that the actual sight of such a ship would instantly transform the Quest from a footnote to a headline.
His gripping new book begins at this moment, detailing the research on the vessel and then a preliminary voyage made aboard the research vessel LeeWay Odyssey to locate the wreck. Things all seem to be set against them: the winch meant to pull the sonar towfish jams, the weather is abysmal, and every delay brings them closer to the edge of the narrow search window of time and funding. Readers will be on the edge of their armchairs -- but it's just then that Geiger changes course and brings us back to the era of Shackleton's rise to international fame.
He does so, intriguingly, by way of Shackleton the lecturer -- dubbed by some the "King of Storytellers" -- which is also the story of how many explorers of that era helped finance their expeditions. Rather like the YouTube channels of today, those who would venture to the ends of the earth first had to stand before the public in a wide variety of venues, including the Chautauqua lecture circuit, to raise the funds for their endeavors. Shackleton was among the most successful of such men, and in many way become the first celebrity-explorer (though some might claim Robert Peary), certainly the first with a fully international audience.
The next section of the book was to me the most fascinating -- a detailed account of how the leading figures of the era vied, not only for public attention, but for the support of governments, particularly Canada's. Due in large part to anxieties over the actions of Danish and American explorers, there was genuine concern over Canada's sovereignty over its northernmost islands, particularly Ellesmere. Robert Peary was rather free in putting American names on his maps, such as "Lincoln Land" and Washington Land," and Kund Rasmussen's Fifth Thule Expedition -- which plotted its course directly across Arctic Canada -- seemed an even greater threat. If exploration could be a way of establishing knowledge and presence over such vast lands, then perhaps it was in the Government's interests to support it.
As Geiger chronicles, this conjunction worked out rather badly for both sides. He gives special attention to Vilhjalmur Stefansson (born Bill Stephenson in the Icelandic-settled area centered around Winnipeg but later extending into North Dakota), who proved a quick study in the gaining of exposure and fame as an explorer. Sadly, his government-funded Canadian Arctic Expedition proved to be a disaster both in its execution and in bad publicity, particularly since Stefansson himself left the expedition's main vessel, the un-seaworthy Karluk, near the very start, ostensibly to go "hunting." In this and many other ways Stefansson was almost the opposite of Shackleton, although history has granted him a better posthumous reputation than he deserves.
The surprise, for many readers -- even those who think of themselves as aficionados of exploration -- may be the extent to which Shackleton vied for his own Canadian-supported expedition, one which came agonizingly close to government approval before Prime Minister Arthur Meighen got what one can't resist calling 'cold feet" -- it's a story largely untold by polar historians. This left Shackleton to scramble to assemble an expedition in the opposite direction -- South. He had a ship, Quest, and a partial crew, along with enough financial support to at least commence preparations.
It was hardly unusual for Sir Ernest to face strong odds against success -- but this time, there would be no James Caird story of rescue and redemption. Repurposed for a survey of the Antarctic coast and some poorly-charted islands, Quest -- chosen for service in more protected Arctic waters -- struggled mightily with the high seas and strong currents of the Antarctic. An ill omen came when the expedition's cat, Questie, leapt overboard in a storm, and worse omens followed as Shackleton himself began to lose his hitherto iron grip on command, his health, and ultimately on life itself; at 3 a.m. on January 5th 1922, he breathed his last breath in his cabin.
In tribute, his men worked hard to salvage the expedition's goals, though in the end there's a bitter truth in the criticism of the results as a sort of "senseless rummaging around." In death, Shackleton gained still greater stature, though there was, alas, no way to convert that stature into further endeavors without his presence. The Quest herself, though, as Geiger details in the fascinating chapters that follow, became as a result a ship imbued with his spirit, and its adventures around the world, whether in the service of exploration or commerce, continued to be followed in the press. When she foundered in the Labrador Sea in 1962, newspapers marked it as the end of the voyage of a great man.
Which of course brings the story back to the search for the Quest with which the book began. The challenges described in the opening chapter overcome, the searchers pressed on to her last reported location. And it was then, on the eve of the final day of their search window, that her shadow appeared on the sonar. Geiger, watching the higher-definition screen in the ship's lab, was the first to spot it, and in words that Franklin expedition buffs will find resonate with those of Ryan Harris when HMS Erebus appeared on his sonar, called out at once, "What's that? That's it!"
And the rest, as they say, is history.
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As a supplement to Geiger's book, which concludes with the discovery of Quest, I'd urge readers to follow the online presence of his remarkable follow-up to this discovery, an ambitious -- and successful -- expedition, with the support of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, to make 3D scans, not only of Quest but also of Robert Falcon Scott's Terra Nova. The imagery they brought back is truly astonishing, and really should be viewed by everyone with an interest in these histories.
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