When Ernest Shackleton and five of the Endurance crew set off on a lifesaving mission in the Antarctic, a shamrock was stitched into the tiny flag they took for wind direction.
As the Sunday Independent has reported, the discovery was made by British adventurer Seb Coulthard, who was one of the participants in a re-enactment of the 830-mile boat journey made by Shackleton, Tom Crean and Tim McCarthy back in April 1916.
Coulthard is due to publish a book that takes a fresh look at much existing Shackleton documentation.
He noted during research that Endurance captain Frank Worsley, who was one of the five sailing with “the Boss” on the James Caird, had referred to a small blue flag on the lifeboat’s mast.
“What we didn’t know till now is that there was a shamrock sewn into that blue flag, and a photograph of it has been found among Shackleton’s possessions,”Coulthard told the newspaper.
A replica of the James Caird flag with shamrock, made for the James Caird replica purchased for the Shackleton Experience in Athy, Co Kildare Photo: Sarah Scriver
“ There were three Irishmen on the James Caird, and to me it feels as it one of those lads must have stitched it in,” he said.
A copy of the flag with the shamrock has been made for a replica of the James Caird which Coulthard sold to the newly refurbished Shackleton Museum – now called the “Shackleton Experience” - in Athy, Co Kildare.
The museum building is also housing the cabin from the ship, Quest, where Shackleton died in 1922.
The sea cabin was donated by Norwegian Ulf Bakke, after Corkman Eugene Furlong tracked it down in 2008, and it was restored by conservationist Sven Habermann in Letterfrack.
The museum was refurbished at a cost of 7.5 million euro and is due to be opened by Minister for Rural Development Dara Calleary this coming Friday (Oct 10).
Read The Sunday Independent here
