An expedition that set out in search of the lost ship of polar explorer Ernest Shackleton has found it — 106 years after the vessel sank off Antarctica.
The wooden ship Endurance has been located remarkably intact about 10,000 feet underwater in the Weddell Sea.
The find is “a milestone in polar history,” said Mensun Bound, a maritime archaeologist and the director of exploration on the expedition, called Endurance22.
“This is by far the finest wooden shipwreck I have ever seen. It is upright, well proud of the seabed, intact and in a brilliant state of preservation. You can even see ‘Endurance’ arced across the stern,” Bound said.
Shackleton’s trans-Antarctic expedition went dangerously awry
As World War I was beginning in 1914, the British explorer Shackleton set out to traverse Antarctica. The plan was for Shackleton to take 27 men on two ships, the Endurance and the Aurora, that would arrive at different locations on the continent to explore two routes by which to sledge across the ice. But in January 1915, the Endurance became trapped in ice off the coast of Antarctica.
The men lived on the ship for months, but pressure from the ice began to slowly crush it. On Oct. 27, 1915, Shackleton gave the order to abandon the Endurance. The men were told to gather no more than 2 pounds each of personal gear from the ship; much of the ship’s supplies had already become inaccessible because of broken timbers in the hull. The Endurance finally broke up and sank into the Weddell Sea on Nov. 21, 1915.
The crew made a new camp on an ice floe, and any ambition to cross Antarctica dissipated. The mission was now one of survival, a saga that would stretch into August 1916 before all the men were rescued.
The Aurora also became trapped in ice. Three men from that voyage died before the final members of the crew were rescued in early 1917. (NPR)