Nimrod was the ship used by Ernest Shackleton

Ernest Shackleton

Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton, CVO, OBE was a notable explorer from County Kildare, Ireland, who was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration...

 in his 1908 Antarctic Nimrod Expedition

Nimrod Expedition

The British Antarctic Expedition 1907–09, otherwise known as the Nimrod Expedition, was the first of three expeditions to the Antarctic led by Ernest Shackleton. Its main target, among a range of geographical and scientific objectives, was to be first to the South Pole...

 for the South Pole

South Pole

The South Pole, also known as the Geographic South Pole or Terrestrial South Pole, is one of the two points where the Earth's axis of rotation intersects its surface. It is the southernmost point on the surface of the Earth and lies on the opposite side of the Earth from the North Pole...

. It was a 41-year-old schooner

Schooner

A schooner is a type of sailing vessel characterized by the use of fore-and-aft sails on two or more masts with the forward mast being no taller than the rear masts....

 of 334 gross register tons which had been used to hunt seals and whales. Shackleton, who paid £5,000 for the ship, had it re-rigged as a barquentine

Barquentine

A barquentine is a sailing vessel with three or more masts; with a square rigged foremast and fore-and-aft rigged main, mizzen and any other masts.-Modern barquentine sailing rig:...

. It also had an auxiliary steam engine, but had a top speed of only six knots under this power. In addition, the ship was so overloaded with supplies for the expedition that it could not carry enough coal to make passage to the Antarctic from New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

, and Shackleton had to arrange for the ship to be towed to the edge of the pack ice by a tramp steamer Koonya. The New Zealand government paid half the cost of the tow, Sir James Mills, Chairman of the Union Steamship Company paid the other half. The Koonya was captained by Fredrick Pryce Evans during the tow.

Nimrod was initially captained by Rupert England, but Shackleton was dissatisfied with him and replaced him with Frederick Pryce Evans, who commanded the ship on the relief voyage in 1909. Nimrod was sold on Shackleton's return to Great Britain

Great Britain

Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...

.

Nimrods fate, 10 years after its return from the Antarctic, was to be battered to pieces in the North Sea

North Sea

In the southwest, beyond the Straits of Dover, the North Sea becomes the English Channel connecting to the Atlantic Ocean. In the east, it connects to the Baltic Sea via the Skagerrak and Kattegat, narrow straits that separate Denmark from Norway and Sweden respectively...

, after running aground on the Barber Sands off the Norfolk

Norfolk

Norfolk is a low-lying county in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast and to the north-west the county is bordered by The Wash. The county...

 (UK) coast on 31 January 1919. Only two of her 12-person crew survived.

A number of geographic features of Antarctica were named after this ship, including Nimrod Glacier

Nimrod Glacier

The Nimrod Glacier is a major glacier about 135 km long, flowing from the polar plateau in a northerly direction through the Transantarctic Mountains between the Geologists and Miller Ranges, then northeasterly between the Churchill Mountains and Queen Elizabeth Range, and finally spilling...

.