Among the most celebrated shipwrecks never to have been found, the vessel was discovered at the bottom of the Weddell Sea to the east of the Antarctic Peninsula.
The discovery of Endurance, the lost vessel of polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, 107 years after it was sunk by pack ice during an expedition to the Antarctic, has been hailed as “monumental”. The sunken wreck has been sitting 3,000 metres in among the iciest waters on Earth for more than a century. Considered among the most celebrated shipwrecks never to have been found, the vessel was discovered by a team of marine archaeologists, adventurers, and technicians as part of the Endurance22 expedition at the bottom of the Weddell Sea to the east of the Antarctic Peninsula using undersea drones.
THE 1915 EXPEDITION
The Endurance, a 144-ft, three-masted ship, is revered in polar history as it spawned one of the greatest survival stories in exploration. The crew left for Antarctica from South Georgia on December 5, 1914 with 27 members and a stowaway, 69 dogs and a cat. Sir Ernest, the expedition leader, aimed to establish a base on the Weddell Sea coast and then navigate to the Ross Sea on the other side.
However, within two days, the ship hit thick sea ice around Antarctica. While it made slow progress for several weeks, a mid-January gale pushed the ice floes against each other and the ship got stuck.
After nine months being beset in ice, the crew abandoned the damaged ship with food, books, bibles, clothing, keepsakes, tools, and three open lifeboats. They shot the cat and some of the dogs. The ship finally sank on November 21, 1915. Captain and navigator Frank Worsley recorded the location with basic navigational tools, using which the expedition team discovered the wreck.
The crew planned to march across the ice to land, but gave up after just 12km in seven days, electing to camp on the floe. When the ice broke up in April, the crew floated the lifeboats and rowed to Elephant Island, an uninhabited and remote outcrop, making it landfall on April 15.
THE DISCOVERY
The discovery was a collaboration between History Hit, historian Dan Snow’s content platform, and the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust. Battling freezing temperatures and sea ice, the team searched a 150 sq mile area in the region where the ship sank in 1915 for over two weeks.
Mensun Bound, the director of exploration and a veteran marine archaeologist, told the BBC that this was the finest wooden shipwreck he had seen by far. The wreck is upright, intact, and brilliantly preserved, he added.
From pictures taken by the submersibles, the ship looks very much the same as last photographed in 1915. The ship’s masts are down, the rigging in a tangle, and the hull broadly coherent. There is some damage evident at the bow. The submersibles also spied boots and crockery.
Bound said the ship’s name can also be seen arced across the stern below the taffrail.
He said this was a milestone for polar history, calling the discovery “monumental”.
“…we are bringing the story of Shackleton and Endurance to new audiences, and to the next generation, who will be entrusted with the essential safeguarding of our polar regions and our planet,” the expedition website quoted Bound as saying.
“We pay tribute to the navigational skills of Captain Frank Worsley, the Captain of the Endurance, whose detailed records were invaluable in our quest to locate the wreck.”
THE SIGNIFICANCE
The discovery of the Endurance wreck brings the history of Sir Ernest’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition to an entirely new generation. The challenge of finding the ship also makes the discovery significant. The Weddell Sea is almost permanently covered in thick ice, the same kind that ruptured the Endurance’s hull. Getting near the location is already hard, as is conducting a search. However, the past month has seen the lowest Antarctic sea-ice extent recorded during the satellite era, stretching back to the 1970s, making the conditions favourable.
The Endurance22 expedition to find the ship comes 100 years after Sir Ernest died in 1922.
