page_title: Frank Worsley
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Frank Worsley / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: Frank Worsley.
context_page_description: Frank Arthur Worsley DSO* OBE RD was a New Zealand sailor and explorer who served on Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914–1916, as captain of the Endurance. He also served in the Royal Navy Reserve during the First World War.
  Born in Akaroa, New Zealand, Worsley joined the New Zealand Shipping Company in 1888. He served aboard several vessels running trade routes between New Zealand, England and the South Pacific. While on South Pacific service, he became renowned for his ability to navigate to tiny, remote islands. He joined the Royal Navy Reserve in 1902 and served on HMS Swiftsure for a year before returning to the Merchant Navy. In 1914, he joined the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, which aimed to cross the Antarctic continent.
  After the expedition's ship Endurance was trapped in pack ice and wrecked, he and the rest of the crew sailed three lifeboats to Elephant Island, off the Antarctic Peninsula. From there, Worsley, Shackleton and four others sailed the 22.5-foot lifeboat James Caird some 800 miles across the stormy South Atlantic Ocean, eventually arriving at their intended destination, South Georgia.
context_section_description: Frank Arthur Worsley was born on 22 February 1872 in Akaroa, New Zealand, one of three children of a farmer, Henry Worsley, and his wife Georgiana. His father arrived in New Zealand from England as a child; his grandfather, Henry Francis Worsley (1806–1876), migrated from Rugby, England aboard the Cornwall to Lyttelton, where he arrived with his large family, in December 1851. The family lived in Grehan Valley, high above Akaroa. Worsley's mother died while he was a toddler. He was sent to school in Akaroa but when his father moved his family to take up work clearing bush from land at Peraki, he was homeschooled for a time. From age 10, he helped with clearing land for sheep pasture and growing cocksfoot. When Frank was 11, his older brother, Harry, left to join the New Zealand Shipping Company as an apprentice and at about the same time, his father moved his family, which was now just Frank and his 13-year-old sister, to Christchurch. Frank attended Fendalton School and marked his final year of schooling by being made head boy.
  Like his brother, Frank was interested in a career at sea. In 1887, his application to join the New Zealand Shipping Company was declined because of his short stature, but he was successful six months later. He was signed on as a junior midshipman aboard the Wairoa, a three-masted clipper which transported wool to London.
caption: Worsley as a child
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