![]() Endurance remained unseen, lost in the icy waters of the Weddell Sea, for nearly 107 years. The stranded crew then endured a treacherous journey across land, ice and sea back to South Georgia and civilisation. She endured 10 months wedged within the pack, until an increase in pressure forced the ship’s stern into the air and tore off its rudder. Soon after, on 18 January 1915, Endurance became trapped in the ice of the Weddell Sea. On 5 December 1914, Ernest Shackleton departed from South Georgia for Antarctica, despite warnings from whalers in South Georgia that the Weddell Sea would be unnavigable due to the thick ice coverage that year. From there, the men would travel by dog sleds and on foot to the Ross Sea, on the opposite side of the Antarctic landmass, via the South Pole. The plan was to sail from South Georgia to Antarctica’s Vahsel Bay. Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914-1917) hoped to accomplish the first land crossing of the Antarctic continent. Image Credit: Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo Shackleton’s Endurance trapped in pack ice in the Weddell Sea, 1915. John Shears, the polar geographer who headed the Endurance22 expedition, said, “we have made polar history with the discovery of Endurance, and successfully completed the world’s most challenging shipwreck search… We have also conducted an unprecedented educational outreach programme, with live broadcasting from onboard, allowing new generations from around the world to engage with Endurance22.” Endurance was located roughly 4 miles south of Worsley’s estimated position.ĭr. To try and locate the wreckage more than a century later, the Endurance22 team plotted a search area around Worsley’s estimated coordinates and used hybrid underwater vehicles to search the seabed looking for shapes and anomalies. Instead, he used previous days’ sextant readings and estimated the direction of ice drift to plot the rough coordinates of where the ship went down. It was an overcast day, however, so Worsley couldn’t use the sun to fix its position. When Endurance sank, her approximate location was calculated by her captain, Frank Worsley. The wreck of Shackleton’s Endurance, with the wheel visible. It is upright, well proud of the seabed, intact and in a brilliant state of preservation.” ![]() This is by far the finest wooden shipwreck I have ever seen. ![]() Mensun Bound, Endurance22’s Director of Exploration, said of the discovery, “we are overwhelmed by our good fortune in having located and captured images of Endurance. In footage captured by the Endurance22 team using submersible vehicles, Endurance can be seen in exquisite detail, with coils of rope draped across the deck, the ship’s wheel stood upright and the brass ‘Endurance’ lettering emblazoned upon the stern, still shimmering after a century underwater. After weeks of surveying the seabed, the shipwreck was located in early March 2022, 100 years after Shackleton died in 1922. Now, the wreck has been found, filmed and surveyed by members of the Endurance22 expedition, which set out in search of the shipwreck in February 2022. Endurance was crushed and sunk by pack ice in 1915, during Shackleton’s failed attempt to cross the Antarctic continent, and remained lost to the depths for more than a century. Ernest Shackleton’s lost ice ship, Endurance, has been discovered in the waters of Antarctica’s Weddell Sea.
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