At graveside of Athy-born explorer, Ernest Shackleton
The Kildare Flag proudly flying on the island of South Georgia, courtesy of Jonathan Shackleton, at the graveside of Kildare-born explorer, Ernest Shackleton, 30 November 2015.
Kevin Kenny emailed us the following snippet from 1915 written by ‘The Boss’ to warm our hearts at Christmastime.
“December 22 was therefore kept as Christmas Day, and most of our small remaining stock of luxuries was consumed at the Christmas feast. We could not carry it all with us, so for the last time for eight months we had a really good meal—as much as we could eat. Anchovies in oil, baked beans, and jugged hare made a glorious mixture such as we have not dreamed of since our school-days. Everybody was working at high pressure, packing and repacking sledges and stowing what provisions we were going to take with us in the various sacks and boxes. As I looked round at the eager faces of the men I could not but hope that this time the fates would be kinder to us than in our last attempt to march across the ice to safety.”
Shackleton’s ship, Endurance, slipped beneath the ice in November 1915 and the men now faced the greatest ordeal of their lives until their eventual rescue in 1916. Still regarded as one of the greatest voyages in maritime history, Shackleton with Tom Crean and four others set sail in a lifeboat, James Caird, from Elephant Island to South Georgia on Easter Monday 1916, as the Rising erupted on the streets of Dublin, a world away.
Kildare has a lot to commemorate in 2016
The Local Studies and Genealogy Department (Kildare County Council) is involved in several on-going projects which will be published in 2016, including:
The Co. Kildare war dead for 1914-18.
http://www.kildare.ie/ehistory/
