William Lincoln Bakewell

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William Lincoln Bakewell was born on November 26, 1888, in Joliet, Illinois. He is best known for being the only American aboard the Endurance during Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914–1916. Bakewell joined the Endurance crew in Buenos Aires with his friend Perce Blackborow and worked as an Able Seaman. He later wrote about his adventures in his memoir, The American on the Endurance.

After the expedition, Bakewell returned to Joliet in 1923 and worked at Elgin, Joliet and Eastern Railway, later becoming a towerman for the Rock Island Railroad. He married Merle in 1925, and they had a daughter, Elizabeth. During World War II he worked at the Diesel Electric Plant in La Grange, Illinois. In August 1945 he bought a farm in Michigan. Bakewell died on May 21, 1969, in Dukes, Michigan, and was buried at Emanuel Lutheran Church Cemetery in Skandia, Michigan.