Cabin from R.Y.S. Quest in which Shackleton died

A significant milestone will be reached next week in the redevelopment of Athy’s eighteenth century Town Hall with the arrival of the most important artefact of the Shackleton Museum. That artefact is the ships cabin from R.Y.S Quest, the ship which carried Ernest Shackleton’s last expedition to the Antarctic and the very cabin in which he died on the 4th January 1922. The cabin was acquired by the Museum in 2016 following a tip off by Eugene Furlong of Cork who became aware of it’s existence in 2008 and first visited it in 2014. The cabin had been removed from the Quest in the early 1920’s and used as a garden shed by a Norwegian family who had it in their ownership for many years. Having been advised by Eugene Furlong of the cabin’s existence the Shackleton Museum Board made approaches, with Eugene’s assistance, to the owner to buy the cabin. Agreement was reached following lengthy negotiations on a price for which I must admit, the Museum did not have the funds. Kildare County Council came to their rescue and paid the full contract price following which we were able through the generous support of DFDS, a shipping company, to have the cabin brought to Letterfrack, Co. Galway for restoration. A benefactor from Naas also covered the cost of the pre-transport costs in Norway. Over the last number of years the cabin has been undergoing careful restoration and conservation under the guidance of Sven Habermann of Conservation Letterfrack, who also carry out work for many state institutions such as the National Museum, the National Gallery and the National Library. The story of its restoration featured in an excellent documentary made by Moondance Productions which first aired on RTE on the 4th January 2022 and later on the BBC. The focus of the documentary was Sven Habermann, the German born conservator who through the lens of the documentary film maker told the story of his meticulous research into the cabin’s history and careful restoration of the cabin over the last number of years. The results of this work was revealed at the very end of the documentary where a very emotional Alexandra Shackleton, granddaughter of the Explorer, saw the cabin for the first time, as it would have been on the night that Shackleton died. We are very fortunate that a number of recordings of interviews with members of the crew including Dr. Leonard Hussey and Dr. Alexander Macklin relation to the last hours of Shackleton’s life have survived. They describe a man struggling with ill health but still anxious to pursue the adventures of his youth. Very movingly Dr. Hussey, relates how Shackleton found it difficult to sleep on the night he died and sought the soothing sound of music, through Hussey’s banjo playing, of some traditional lullabies to help him to sleep. With Shackleton’s death, the heart went out of his expedition and many months later the crew on the ship returned to the United Kingdom and notably the ship Quest was sold to a Norwegian shipping company. The cabin itself was removed from the ship shortly thereafter as its location on the ships deck was not conducive to the whaling and sealing operations of it’s new owners. The ship would stay at sea for almost 40 more years. In 1928 it took party in the search for survivors of the airship Italia which was lost in the Arctic. She transported the members of the 1930 British Arctic Air Route expedition north when she was described as a ‘broad-beamed, tubby little ship, decks stacked with gear’. The ship was again in the cold regions in 1935 for the British Greenland expedition and this was followed by service in World War Two as a minesweeper and light cargo vessel. It's long life of service came to an end when the ship sank on the 5th May 1962 after being hold by ice. All the crew survived the sinking The ship has been back in the news recently with its re-discovery on the ocean floor off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. The remains of the 38m long two masted schooner were located by a team led by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. It is mostly intact lying in 390m of water but if you want to a true relic of that noble little ship, it’s cabin, the place of Shackleton’s death with be a focal point of the new Shackleton Museum opening in Athy in June 2025.