100 years on, a chance to relive Shackleton expedition

A hundred years after the appearance of one of the strangest and least enticing advertisements in newspaper history - "Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages. Bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success" - a single brave soul is being sought to shuffle along in the heroic footsteps of Ernest Shackleton.

To mark the centenary of the explorer's unsuccessful Nimrod expedition to the south pole, six descendants of Shackleton and his crew are offering a member of the public a place on their polar jaunt. This time round, the specification is a little less bleak.

"We want someone whose cup is always half-full, never half-empty; who will be the first to volunteer for the cooking rather than crawling into their sleeping bag; who can laugh at themselves and keep others' spirits up when the chips are down," said Lieutenant Colonel Henry Worsley, a descendant of Frank Worsley, Shackleton's skipper on the Endurance, the ship used on a later expedition.

The adventurer will have to be fit, though, to keep up with the rest of the expedition, which consists of Worsley and five others, among them Shackleton's great-grandson, Patrick Bergel.

Three of the latter-day explorers will set off in October on the same 900-mile, 80-day route chosen for Shackleton's 1908-09 expedition. Ninety-seven miles from the pole - at the point where low food stores and blizzards forced Shackleton and his team to turn back on January 9 1909 - they will meet the other four members of the group. From there, they will attempt to achieve what Shackleton never managed by hauling their 300lb (136kg) sleds all the way to the pole. The seven-strong team will take the compass that Shackleton himself used to navigate his way through the barren landscape and will rely on copious quantities of porridge to power them through the 10 hours of sled-lugging they will put in every day.

Unlike Shackleton, they will not use ships or ponies. After flying in from Punta Arenas in Chile, they will be dropped on Ross Island, at the edge of the Ross ice shelf. If all goes well, they will fly out from the pole 80 days later.

The final expedition member, who will take part in the second leg of the trek, will have to undergo fitness and psychometric tests and panel interviews. He or she will then have to see off competition from four other finalists during endurance training in north Wales to secure a place on the trip.

To get a taste of the 50mph headwinds and -35C (-31F) temperatures in Antarctica, he or she will also have to complete a crossing of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic.

"This is an amazing, unique opportunity," said Worsley, who has been in the army for 25 years. "It has taken us five years to get the trip off the ground but anyone reasonably fit, who goes to the gym and is a strong team player, can apply to join us for the last 12 days of the trek."

Worsley, 47, from Hereford, will undertake the full route with a City worker, Will Gow, and a shipping lawyer, Henry Adams. Gow, 35, from Ashford, Kent, is related to Shackleton by marriage, and Adams, 33, from Snape, near Woodbridge, Suffolk, is a great-grandson of Jameson Boyd Adams, Shackleton's number two on the unsuccessful expedition.

As well as Shackleton's great-grandson, Bergel, 36, from London who works in advertising, the other expedition members are: Tim Fright, 24, from Billingshurst, West Sussex, a great-great-nephew of Frank Wild, the only explorer to accompany Shackleton on all his missions; and David Cornell, 38, from Andover in Hampshire, another great-grandson of Boyd Adams.

The new expedition is being used to launch a £10m Shackleton Foundation, which will fund projects that embody the adventurer's spirit and hunger for "calculated risk".

This time round, though, there will be no wages at all for the intrepid explorers. The team members might, however, bolster themselves with the thought that Shackleton was knighted when he returned to the UK, despite falling 97 miles short of the pole.

· To apply for the place on the expedition go to www.matrixgroup.co.uk/shackleton