One of the first tasks of Endurance22’s team of scientists and navigational experts was to review Worsley’s records to come up with a more accurate location. Due to poor visibility on the day the men abandoned the ship, however, Worsley had been unable to take proper measurements that would help calculate the direction and speed of the floes. When the vessel was eventually crushed and sank, the captain of Endurance, Frank Worsley, took measurements of the location using a sextant and recorded it in his diary.
After Endurance was initially trapped in the ice, it continued to drift as the floes moved with the current. One of the knottiest problems was establishing the ship’s location. This winter, they tried again, organizing and funding Endurance22. In 2019, the Falklands Heritage Maritime Trustmounted its first expedition to find the ship but had been unable to locate the wreck. “We could see from the bridge that the ship was bending like a bow under titanic pressure.”Īnd that’s where Endurance remained, entombed beneath the polar ice at a depth of 10,000 feet. very heavy pressure developed, with twisting strains that racked the ship fore and aft,” Shackleton wrote on Tuesday, October 26. The expedition made good progress at first, but as the Antarctic winter of 1915 closed in, the men found themselves trapped in the sea ice. They affectionately referred to him as “the Boss.” Shackleton called it “the worst sea in the world.”īut if anyone was prepared for such an adventure it was Ernest Shackleton: A veteran of previous Antarctic explorations, he’d been part of the great race to reach the South Pole before Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen claimed it.įor this ambitious cross-continent journey, he’d handpicked the crew and endeared himself by dining with the men, telling jokes, leading sing-alongs, and organising games. The Weddell Sea, covering an area of more than a million square miles, is one of the most remote and unforgiving environments in the world, littered with icebergs and roiled by strong surface winds. (Related: how UK technology is driving new underwater vehicles.)īut the enemy that Shackleton and his men faced was of a different sort. As the camera glides over the wooden deck of the ship, video captures century-old ropes, tools, portholes, railings-even the masts and helm-all in nearly pristine condition due to cold temperatures, the absence of light, and low oxygen in the watery resting place. The first images of the ship were transmitted via autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) from nearly two miles down on March 5. A team of researchers has announced they’ve located the wreck at the bottom of the treacherous Weddell Sea, adjacent to the northernmost part of Antarctica. While all of the expedition’s 28 crew eventually were rescued, the ship’s final resting place has remained a much-discussed maritime mystery-the unwritten last chapter in a legendary story of survival and triumph. Sea anemones, sponges and other small ocean life made homes on the wreckage but didn't appear to have damaged it.IN THE AUTUMN of 1915, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurancesank off the coast of Antarctica, stranding its crew on drifting sea ice and setting in motion one of history’s most dramatic tales of overcoming seemingly hopeless odds. The ship's wooden timbers, while damaged from the crush of ice that sank in, still hold together. Amazingly, the helm has remained intact after more than a century underwater, with gear piled against the taffrail as if Shackleton's crew had only recently left it. The underwater drones produced stunningly clear images of the 144-foot-long ship. "This has been the most complex subsea project ever undertaken," said Nico Vincent, the mission's subsea project manager. Royal Geographical Society via Getty Images Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition 1914-1916 (Weddell Sea Party). The region remains one of the most difficult parts of the ocean to navigate.
Shackleton himself described the site of the sink as "the worst portion of the worst sea in the world." The explorers used underwater drones to find and film the shipwreck in the merciless Weddell Sea, which has a swirling current that sustains a mass of thick sea ice that can challenge even modern ice breakers.
Despite the hardships, all of the crew survived.
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