Page "Ernest Shackleton" Paragraph 20

On 1 January 1908, Nimrod sailed for the Antarctic from Lyttelton Harbour, New Zealand.

Shackleton's original plans had envisaged using the old Discovery base in McMurdo Sound to launch his attempts on the South Pole and South Magnetic Pole.

However, before leaving England he had been pressured to give an undertaking to Scott that he would not base himself in the McMurdo area, which Scott was claiming as his own field of work.

Shackleton reluctantly agreed to look for winter quarters either at the Barrier Inlet ( which Discovery had briefly visited in 1902 ) or at King Edward VII Land.