Expedition Finds Ernest Shackleton’s Sunken Ship Endurance Near Antarctica

SS Endurance, August 01, 1914
Topical Press Agency / stringer/ Hulton Archive, Getty
Nick Gilbertson

An expedition team assembled by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust says it has located Anglo-Irish explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance at the bottom of the Weddel Sea in Antarctica, 107 years after it sank.

In 1915, while on the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, Shackleton’s ship became trapped in a dense ice pack, and was crushed by the ice, causing it to sink. Over a century later, Endurance22, Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust’s expedition team, announced in a press release that it had found the ship at a depth of nearly 10,000 feet.

The expedition team, which embarked on its search in early February, found Endurance in the team’s defined search area, some four miles the location originally recorded by Arthur Worsley, the ship’s captain. Mensun Bound, director of exploration for the expedition, told NBC News that Endurance’s preservation is “beyond imagination.”

Endurance22 worked from the S.A. Agulhas II, a South African polar research and logistics vessel, under Master Captain Knowledge Bendu, and used “Saab’s Sabertooth hybrid underwater search vehicles,” the release stated. The ship is owned by the Department of Forestry, Fisheries, and Environment.

Brittanica noted Endurance set out for its expedition from England in 1914, and the release states the crew’s goal was “to achieve the first land crossing of Antarctica from the Weddell Sea via the South Pole to the Ross Sea.” Endurance’s 28 crew members were forced to abandon ship after it became stuck in packed ice, and the crew set up makeshift camps on the ice floes drifting northwards where they stayed for months, according to the release.

The crew then used lifeboats to reach the uninhabited Elephant Island. From there, six men, including Shackleton, sailed 800 miles in the lifeboat James Caird and reached the mountainous island of South Georgia. Shackleton and two more men trekked through South Georgia and made it to a whaling station at Stromness Bay, where they were able to set up rescue operations that brought home the entire crew without a death, according to the release.

Bound says that though the discovery is of a historical nature, it opens opportunities to bring the Endurance‘s story to current and future generations.

This is a milestone in polar history.  However, it is not all about the past; 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. We hope our discovery will engage young people and inspire them with the pioneering spirit, courage and fortitude of those who sailed Endurance to Antarctica. 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. 

A National Geographic documentary chronicling the expedition is in the works and is set to air this fall as part of the network’s EXPLORER series.

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