There's been this trend recently of "hold historical figure up to modern society's standards and then declare them terrible when they don't". This article not only continues that trend, but worse, it makes up new modern values to hold him up to that modern society also does not measure up to.
It doesn't actually make the case that the fact that Shackleton was in any way "worse" than his contemporaries, and claims that him using his connections to fund antarctic expeditions was somehow a personal failing as though someone could just write a grant for a ship back in 1902.
It's less a historical piece and more reads like some freelance advertiser's attempt to make an article they can just spam into any discussion about Shackleton so that they can drive traffic for themself.
Heh. I'd first learned about the Archangel campaign because one of the US' WWI propagandists had listed all the places their work had been distributed — including Arkhangelsk.
[according to my grandmother, the Whites in our area made it out via Transsib to Vladivostok, through Shanghai, and thence to North America]
Anyway, I'm not a fan of that particular style of pop-history article myself. I much prefer an article written by someone who is capable of doing research and interpreting sources.
Sure the brits in general were full of self-confidence and stiff upper lips and lacked competence, but that includes most of them.
Scurvy was not well understood at the time, most other polar explorers avoided it, not with lime juice, but by eating raw meat.
Not using skis were a huge mistake by all of the brits, but it was just not part of the culture. Norwegians grew up on them.
Same with dogs, it takes a lot of competence and energy to train, you can not do that at a whim.
Schackleton is still the most successful among the british in my opinion, and a hero.
Scott though...