Eric Marshall

Who was Eric Marshall?

Eric Stewart Marshall was an Antarctic explorer with the Nimrod Expedition led by Ernest Shackleton in 1907-09, and was one of the party of four men who reached Furthest South at 88°23′S 162°00′E / 88.383°S 162°E on 9 January 1909.

Born in Hampstead, Surrey on 29 May 1879, he was educated at Monkton Combe School, Bath and at Emmanuel College, Cambridge before qualifying as a surgeon from St Bartholomew’s Hospital. Marshall met Shackleton in 1906 at a house party in London. Shackleton told him about the proposed expedition to the South Pole and suggested Marshall go on a training course on surveying and then he could become the expedition’s surgeon, surveyor and cartographer as well as the principal photographer. See: Polar Friction: the relationship between Marshall and Shackleton by Leif Mills, 2012

According to Leif Mills, who has written about the two men in Polar Friction: the relationship between Marshall and Shackleton, 2012, Marshall was "an indispensable member of Shackleton’s expedition; yet on the voyage down from New Zealand to Antarctica, during the long Antarctic winter at their base at Cape Royds and on the actual southern journey, Marshall constantly criticised Shackleton on his diary, sometimes in almost vitriolic language, and seemed to have nothing but contempt for him." Marshall maintained his criticism of Shackleton throughout his life, referring to him as ‘the biggest mountebank of the century' in one letter held at the Royal Geographic Institute dated 30 August 1956.