Ernest Shackleton’s Famous Job Ad, ‘Men Wanted for Hazardous Journey,’ Is Probably a Myth
Citizen historians have spent decades searching for the original text of Shackleton’s advertisement. Now, some say it might never have existed
Ernest Shackleton made three trips to Antarctica—and died while attempting a fourth. But the Irish British polar explorer is best known for his 1914 expedition aboard the ship Endurance, which he led in a bid to make the first land crossing of the White Continent. That trip ultimately ended in disaster, with the Endurance getting trapped in pack ice and, eventually, sinking to the bottom of the Weddell Sea. Miraculously, Shackleton managed to save himself and all 27 members of his crew.
Shackleton’s famed Endurance expedition—and the subsequent rescue mission—became the subject of dozens of books, documentaries and TV shows. Often, these retellings mention an advertisement Shackleton supposedly placed in a London newspaper before setting off on his quest to cross Antarctica on foot.
It is said to have read: “Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success.” According to legend, more than 5,000 men—and “three sporty girls”—applied for the chance to join him.
Shackleton’s brutally honest recruitment pitch has since become famous and is often hailed as one of the greatest advertisements ever written. But did the explorer really write and submit this candid ad copy?
Probably not. Since at least the early 2000s, citizen historians have been searching for any trace of the legendary advertisement—and they’ve repeatedly come up empty. The conclusion, at least for now, is that Shackleton’s famous “help wanted” ad is probably a myth.
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Amateur sleuths have searched high and low for the original copy, reading historic books and scouring rolls of newspaper microfilm in an attempt to unravel its mysterious origins. Their painstaking search efforts are outlined on a website called the Antarctic Circle, which describes itself as a “non-commercial forum and resource on historical, literary, bibliographical, artistic and cultural aspects of Antarctica and the South Polar regions.”
In the early 2000s, the Antarctic Circle offered $100 to the first person who could track down a copy of the original advertisement, along with the name and date of the publication it appeared in.
“This is a needle-in-a-haystack situation,” said Bob Headland, then-curator of the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, to National Geographic Adventure magazine in May 2004. “But I’m fairly convinced this haystack doesn’t have a needle in it.”
In 2016, Headland added a case of Madeira to the reward to sweeten the deal. So far, though, no one has been able to claim it. But the quest has turned up some interesting tidbits nonetheless.
One of the earliest references to Shackleton’s ad is thought to be in the 1949 edition of The 100 Greatest Advertisements, a book by Julian Lewis Watkins. But where Watkins heard or saw the advertisement remains a mystery, as he didn’t include any information about his source—only that it appeared in London newspapers in 1900. That timeline doesn’t necessarily add up, because in 1900, Shackleton was gearing up to join a 1901 expedition led by Robert Falcon Scott, not organizing his own.
In December 1913, Shackleton did write a letter to the London Times announcing his Endurance expedition, which he dubbed “The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition.”
But it wouldn’t have made much sense for Shackleton to place a job ad, too, because the “amount of press coverage for his expedition would already have given him plenty of men to choose from,” according to the South Georgia Heritage Trust, a Scottish charity working to protect the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia and Shackleton’s legacy there. (The island is home to the whaling station where Shackleton and two crew members arrived in May 1916 to get help for the Endurance’s shipwrecked crew, marooned on Elephant Island, 800 miles away. Shackleton is also buried on South Georgia.)
Regardless of whether the advertisement was real or fake, the ill-fated voyage of the Endurance—and Shackleton’s ability to get his entire crew home safely—remains a source of fascination. More than a century after the 144-foot-long, three-masted vessel sank into the frigid depths of the Weddell Sea, a group of researchers finally located the wreckage in March 2022.
Using more than 25,000 images taken of the ship, they created and released a 3D digital model of the vessel—much of which is still intact. And, in October 2024, National Geographic debuted a new documentary about Shackleton’s doomed voyage and the recent quest to find his long-lost shipwreck.
“It’s the greatest survival story ever told, and it’s also such a splendid example of this fundamental human condition, this audacity to dream big and to have these crazy objectives, and then the paradox that you have to also have that grit, courage, determination and diligence to make it through,” Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, who co-directed the film with her husband, Jimmy Chin, and filmmaker Natalie Hewit, tells the Hollywood Reporter’s Julian Sancton.
