Famed shipwreck of Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance found off Antarctica

One of the world’s best-known shipwrecks, Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance, has been discovered off the coast of Antarctica more than a century after it sank, explorers announced Wednesday.

Endurance was discovered at a depth of 9,869 feet in the Weddell Sea, about four miles from where it was slowly crushed by ice in 1915.

“We are overwhelmed by our good fortune to have located and captured images of Endurance,” said Mensun Bound, the expedition’s exploration director.

“This is by far the best wooden shipwreck I’ve ever seen. It’s upright, proud of the seabed, intact and in a brilliant state of preservation. You can even see ‘Endurance’ arched aft,” he said. a statement.

The expedition, organized by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust, left Cape Town on 5 February with a South African icebreaker, hoping to find Endurance before the end of the southern hemisphere summer.

As part of Shackleton’s Imperial Transantarctic Expedition between 1914 and 1917, Endurance was to make the first land voyage across Antarctica, but fell victim to the tumultuous Weddell Sea.

Just east of the Larsen ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula, it was trapped in sea ice for more than 10 months before being crushed and sunk.

The voyage became legendary due to Shackleton’s miraculous escape and his crew on foot and in boats.

The crew managed to escape by camping on the sea ice until it broke.

They then launched lifeboats on Elephant Island and then on the island of South Georgia, a British overseas territory about 870 miles east of the Falkland Islands.

Despite the difficulties, the entire crew survived.

Explorers used submarine drones to find and film the wreck in the ruthless sea of ​​Weddell, which has a swirling current that holds a thick mass of sea ice that can defy even modern icebreakers.

Shackleton himself described the place of the sink as “the worst part of the worst sea in the world.”

The region remains one of the most difficult parts of the ocean to navigate.

“This has been the most complex underwater project ever undertaken,” said Nico Vincent, the mission’s underwater project director.

Underwater drones produced incredibly clear images of the 144-foot-long ship. Surprisingly, the rudder has remained intact after more than a century underwater, with the team piled up against the taffrail as if the Shackleton crew had recently left it.

The woodwork of the ship, although damaged by the crushing of the sunken ice, is still held together. Sea anemones, sponges and other small oceanic species made homes on the wreckage, but it did not appear to have damaged them.

Photographs of the expedition showed the icebreaker Agulhas II of South Africa surrounded by ice, with the crew lifted with a crane over the icy sea.

Under international law, the shipwreck is protected as a historic site. Explorers were allowed to film and scan the spacecraft, but not touch it at all, meaning no artifacts could be returned to the surface.

The underwater search drones used are known as Sabertooths and built by Saab, which submerged under ice to the farthest depths of the Weddell Sea.

During the mission, they also investigated climate change, documenting ice shunts and weather patterns.

The team is now returning to the port of Cape Town.

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