NavList:

In my reply last year https://NavList.net/m2.aspx/Two-men-Old-Man-stage-horizontal-angle-sights-DavidPike-dec-2016-g37339
to DavidC’s question relating to an unidentified photograph from New Zealand https://NavList.net/m2.aspx/Two-men-Old-Man-stage-horizontal-angle-sights-DavidC-dec-2016-g37267 of a gentleman wearing a cap, I suggested it might be Sir Ernest Shackleton.  Well the cap, if not the wearer, has turned up again.

I had in my possession for a few days recently a book named ‘The Shackleton Voyages: A pictorial anthology of the polar explorer and Edwardian hero’ by Roland Huntford, and from it I copied the photographs below.  The originals appear to have been taken around the time of Shackleton’s return from the Nimrod Expedition in 2009.  You’ll note that the normally stocky Shackleton is quite slim after his exhausting trek to 88S.  The fact that Nimrod called at New Zealand ties in with the fact that the unknown photograph is held in New Zealand.  That said, I don’t think that the ship is Nimrod; the officer’s uniforms are too smart (neither is she Endurance for the same reason).  However, it’s quite possible that Shackleton did some touring around New Zealand by ship before returning to England in Nimrod.  Is it possible that Shackleton was presented with the cap in NZ from a burgeoning NZ tweed industry?

Another possibility for the unknown photograph is that Shackleton was still wearing the cap when he followed Endurance to Buenos Aires in the Houlder Bros managed Vessel SS La Negra.  If so, the cap is probably now at the bottom of the Weddell Sea.

Comments invited.  DaveP

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