 Launched in July 1995 as MV "Polar Queen" for GC Rieber Shipping, she was operated in the Antarctic by other national programmes.The British Antarctic Survey acquired her on a long-term bareboat charter in August 1999 to replace .She was renamed RRS "Ernest Shackleton" in 2000, after the Anglo-Irish polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton but was known to users as The Shack.