Very soon after his death in 1922, Sir Ernest Shackleton's celebrity began to wane. Relative obscurity is a fate that befalls many explorers, and for much of the past century, Shackleton's saga of survival in particular could not compete with the desolating finale of his polar rival, Captain Robert Falcon Scott. But suddenly, and quite recently, all of that changed. A public appetite for extreme adventure stories, a culture that celebrates survival over romantic expiration and, most significantly, one obsessively concerned with quantifying and replicating the qualities of successful leadership have produced an upsurge of interest in Shackleton. During his calamitous Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914-16, Shackleton led his men, who were marooned in the Antarctic, to their salvation, overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles in the process. His experiences during the ill-fated voyage of the Endurance have recently spawned an industry. As USA Today reported this spring: "Their story, one of the coldest epic journeys of the 20th century, is red-hot in the 21st."

The expedition has been the subject of more than two dozen books and several documentary films, including The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition, sponsored by Morgan Stanley. Shackleton's narrative, South, first published in 1919, is now available in mass-market paperback. Even Hollywood has entered the fray: Wolfgang Petersen, the director of The Perfect Storm, will direct Endurance for Columbia Pictures, with Russell Crowe touted for the lead role. A four-part miniseries for A&E is also in the works, starring Kenneth Branagh. A private "expedition-based" Shackleton School has been established in Massachusetts; its motto: "One leader at a time." And Dr. Robert Ballard, the National Geographic Society's explorer-in-residence, is also getting into the act. Ballard plans to use remote-controlled submarines to find and photograph the Endurance.

Undoubtedly the most curious manifestation of the fad for Shackleton, however, is his appropriation by management gurus for two recent books: Shackleton's Way: Leadership Lessons from the Great Antarctic Explorer, by Margot Morrell and Stephanie Capparell, and Leading at the Edge: Leadership Lessons from the Extraordinary Saga of Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition, by Dennis N. T. Perkins. Shackleton, no longer simply a historical figure, is lauded for his non-hierarchical, feel-good style of management during crisis, an example of "high risk leadership."

At no point in recent history has the desire for leadership been more keenly felt. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States have created an unprecedented focus on one leader in particular: George W. Bush, the U.S. President. Indeed, questions of leadership, and the attributes needed to see the world and world economy through a difficult time, have become the subject of debate in both a political and corporate context.

Within days of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Fortune magazine organized a conference to be held in early November, "Leadership in Turbulent Times," with New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and AOL Time Warner chairman Steve Case among the speakers. On Oct. 13, The Economist published an editorial ruminating about the difficulties arising from Sept. 11 and pointing to one individual as possessing the "skills required to lead people through dark adversity." It was not, as one might have supposed, Bush, who has been widely applauded for his resolute response to the attacks. It was not even Giuliani, the law-and-order mayor who built his reputation ridding New York of its reputation as a crime capital and who has been seen as a pillar of strength throughout the current crisis. No, the leader The Economist was referring to was Ernest Shackleton. It is, the magazine's editorial states, "time for the Shackleton approach." But is it really?

There is another explorer who, like Shackleton, prevailed in a remarkable saga of survival, who was indeed trapped and marooned in polar conditions for twice as long as Shackleton and fully 80 years earlier. This explorer had the additional advantages of a distinguished military career and a legitimate claim to real geographical accomplishments. He was an old command-and-control-style leader whose methods are an affront to prevailing managerial conventions, yet he too was able to successfully lead people through "dark adversity." Only students of Arctic history will have heard of him. His name is Sir John Ross.

What is it, then, that can be learned from studying these two explorers? Shackleton considered himself a failure, and not unreasonably so. His expeditions were, by the normal measure of such things, failures. He did not achieve any of the geographical goals he set for himself. He failed even to reach the point of embarkation for the object of the 1914 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition -- an attempt to cross Antarctica on foot. The Endurance was beset by ice one day away from its intended landing site and was carried for months in the ice of the Weddell Sea before being crushed. The stranded men drifted on the floes, then escaped in small boats to nearby Elephant Island. Knowing no searchers would find them there, Shackleton decided to leave the majority of the 28 men behind and, with a party of five men and the most seaworthy boat, the 20-foot James Caird, risk the extreme perils of the ocean south of Cape Horn. His goal was the Stromness Whaling Station on the island of South Georgia, some 1,300 kilometres away. They endured gales, snow squalls and heavy seas. Once, when it appeared there was a break in the weather, Shackleton shouted, "It's clearing, boys!" Then immediately after, "For God's sake, hold on! It's got us!"

What Shackleton took to be a line of white sky, signalling improved weather, was in fact the foaming crest of an enormous wave. They were very nearly swamped and had to bail "for dear life." Yet the five men not only overcame the immediate crisis, but in an astounding feat of navigation succeeded in reaching South Georgia, touching shore on the opposite side of the island from their destination. Leaving the others behind with the boat, Shackleton and two officers then made an arduous 36-hour crossing of the island's mountains, glaciers and snowfields. At one point, straddling a ridge, trapped between fog at their backs and a precipice ahead, a sharp incline disappearing from view, they jumped "into darkness," plunging 600 to 900 metres in less than three minutes. Had they perished, it is likely the entire expedition would have as well.

Shackleton and the two others survived the crossing, however, arriving at Stromness station with long beards and matted hair, their 16-month ordeal over. The castaways on Elephant Island were rescued three months later. All had survived. The only deaths occurred among a shore party from the other half of Shackleton's expedition, those assigned to lay depots on Antarctica: One man succumbed to scurvy, and two others died in mishaps.

The expedition had come close to ending in mass disaster. The fact it did not is the foundation of Shackleton's legend. There is little doubt about his qualities as a leader Û his men provided testimonials to that. He was, said one, "a great man, or should I say, a great leader of men." Of course, had he failed to reach South Georgia, or died during its crossing, it is unlikely anyone would have thought to write a management book about him. Morrell and Capparell, the authors of Shackleton's Way, argue that Shackleton -- or "The Boss," as they prefer to call him -- encountered many of the same problems managers in the modern workplace face. Their thesis is that "Shackleton-style leadership is the antithesis of the old command-and-control models." According to these authors, The Boss triumphed because he rejected "the leadership and organizational models of the past: power hierarchies, the military, even the production line." Instead, he embodied the enlightened attributes characteristic of the best corporate commanders of today: "flexibility, teamwork and individual triumph."

Shackleton's way represented leadership "without the hidden agenda of an exclusionary inner circle. It's business with a human face." Throughout the text, the book features leadership lessons printed in bold typeface, such as: "Shackleton made himself accessible to his crew, listened to his men's concerns and kept them informed about the ship's business." Or "Shackleton related to every person under him as a human being, not only as a worker." In Leading at the Edge, author Dennis N.T. Perkins also assails command-and-control leadership, singling out the Royal Navy of the 19th century, suggesting its tenets of codification, arrogance, complacency and conservatism made for "a flawed institution" that produced "leadership failures" such as Captain Robert Falcon Scott, who lost the race to the South Pole by one month to Norwegian Roald Amundsen. All the members of Scott's party died on the return journey in 1912, although Scott did achieve something Shackleton never did: He actually reached the South Pole. Morrell and Capparell argue that "early polar exploration is full of haunting tales of the demise of men who didn't have the good fortune to be under the charge of a man such as Shackleton." Both books cite examples of leadership failures on expeditions -- not only Scott, but American polar explorers Aldolphus Greely and Charles Francis Hall, Australian Antarctic explorer Douglas Mawson and Canadian explorer and ethnologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson. Notably absent from either list, however, is Arctic explorer Sir John Ross. The omission is surely deliberate.

Ross could hardly be deemed a failure, yet he was a product of that "flawed institution," the Royal Navy. He had joined at age nine and spent three decades in it, serving with distinction during the Napoleonic Wars and surviving grave injuries, including sabre wounds to the head. (By contrast, Shackleton failed to receive a commission in the Royal Navy, although he did serve a short stint in the Royal Navy Reserve as a sub-lieutenant.) Ross was manifestly of the old command-and-control model, a point emphasized by an embittered member of his expedition who portrayed him as dour, aloof and "steeped in the starch of official dignity": "Capt. Ross himself was not a sociable character, but in extenuation of his reserve and haughtiness, it must be admitted that the school in which he had been bred, namely, the quarter deck of a British man-of-war, is not the one best adapted to teach a man urbanity and civility towards the inferior."

Ross's greatest failing was his inability to make himself popular. Where Shackleton arranged games, skits and concerts for his men and was "the life and soul of half the skylarking and fooling in the ship," amusements on Ross's expedition were "like angels' visits, very few and far between." Where Shackleton "broke down the traditional hierarchies," Ross was not only tolerant but solicitous of class differences. Where Shackleton made himself accessible to his crew and relaxed with them as comrades, Ross was "in some degree a hermit in his cabin." Where Shackleton at age 40 "was so young at heart" he seemed younger than men half his age, the corpulent Ross appeared to be much older than his 52 years. And where Shackleton sought to "pamper his men" and believed in the "importance of creature comforts in maintaining morale," Ross purposefully reduced the heat during winter to lessen the effects of condensation. He then responded to complaints from the crew by bragging about being in possession of an unusual capacity for generating body heat. No one ever got close enough to him to notice.

In short, John Ross was the antithesis of Ernest Shackleton. Only a couple of books have ever been written about him, and the narrative of his journey has been out of print since 1835, excepting one facsimile edition published 35 years ago. He might have been "leading at the edge," yet no one would dream of writing a management book about Ross's way. And yet Ross's ship, the Victory, was well named. His 1829-33 voyage in search of the Northwest Passage marked a triumph both for human ingenuity and the base instinct for survival over the forces of inevitability. His was a remarkable story of physical endurance -- one that equals, if not surpasses, Shackleton's feat eight decades later.

Ross's expedition, with 23 officers and men, was stranded for four harrowing winters, more than twice the duration of Shackleton's. It was a near-miraculous saga. Like Shackleton, Ross was forced to abandon his ship, which had been trapped for three winters off the eastern coast of the Boothia Peninsula, in the Canadian Arctic. Initially, the expedition was in contact with area Inuit and, unlike other explorers of the 19th century, emulated Inuit hunting methods and fresh diet. But eventually they parted company, and Ross and his men were left entirely to their own devices. Like Shackleton, Ross was forced to undertake a gruelling trek on foot. In the spring of 1832, he led his men north toward Fury Beach, on Somerset Island, where there was a store of provisions and the greater likelihood of open water. The crew hauled sledges loaded with boats and supplies. It was a daunting task, and at one point the exhausted men insisted they abandon their burden. Ross characterized their behaviour as "the first symptom approaching to mutiny." His response was to reprimand their emissary for his impudence, then, "in a manner not easily misunderstood," ordered the party to proceed. Like Shackleton, Ross intended to use the ship's small boats to make a run of hundreds of more kilometres in the hope of being rescued. He planned to sail to Baffin Bay and rendezvous with the summer whaling fleet. Yet even off Fury Beach, the ice failed to give way. The crew faced a fourth winter in the Arctic. Not only were their spirits broken, but the remaining provisions were inadequate. Ross ordered half-rations, and the crew barricaded themselves into a temporary structure they had built. It was divided into two equal sections Û one for the ordinary seamen, the other segregated quarters for the officers. Ross named it Somerset House.