Henry Worsley
Army Officer and Polar Explorer · 1960–2016
Who is Henry Worsley?
Henry Worsley was a British Army officer and polar explorer, a descendant relative of Frank Worsley, captain of Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance. A veteran of the SAS, he led expeditions retracing routes of the Heroic Age explorers, including a 2008-2009 trek following Shackleton's furthest-south route and a 2011-2012 expedition marking the centenary of Scott's and Amundsen's race to the Pole. In November 2015 he set out to become the first person to cross Antarctica alone, unsupported, and without kites, hauling his own supplies on a sledge across roughly one thousand miles. After more than seventy days and around nine hundred miles, exhausted and only around thirty miles short of completing the crossing, Worsley radioed for help, stating that he had run out of physical endurance. He was evacuated to a hospital in Punta Arenas, Chile, where he died on 25 January 2016 from complete organ failure caused by bacterial peritonitis. His journey raised significant funds for wounded servicemen and was later chronicled in David Grann's book The White Darkness (2018).
Sources: David Grann, The White Darkness (2018) · BBC News, coverage of Henry Worsley's final expedition and death (2016)