Nimrod was the ship Ernest Shackleton used in his 1908 Antarctic Nimrod Expedition for the South Pole. It was a 41-year-old schooner of 334 gross register tons that had been used to hunt seals and whales. Shackleton, who paid £5,000 for the ship, had it re-rigged as a barquentine. 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, and Shackleton had to arrange for the ship to be towed to the edge of the pack ice by tramp steamer "Koonya".