Nothing makes me feel nostalgic like listening to The Weakerthans. They have a song that references Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton that I had to play after I saw that news that the wreck of his ship, the Endurance, was discovered on March 5 — 107 years after it sank.

Background

Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton was an Anglo-Irish explorer who led three expeditions to Antarctica (after being part of the Discovery expedition [1901-1904] under Robert Falcon Scott).

• The Nimrod expedition (1907-1909) failed to reach the South Pole but got within 97.5 nautical miles
• The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914-1917) was an attempt to cross Antarctica (Roald Amundsen had reached the South Pole in 1911)
• The Shackleton-Rowett expedition (1921-1922) was Shackleton’s last as he died of a heart attack on board the ship

The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition

The second expedition led by Shackleton is considered the last major expedition of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. In December 1914 the Endurance became stuck in pack ice in the Weddell Sea and drifted for months. Finally as the ship was being crushed Shackleton gave the order to abandon ship on October 27, 1915. The 28-man crew was able to camp out on the ice and continue visiting the Endurance until it sank beneath the ice on November 7.

After a couple of failed attempts at a march the men camped on the ice until it broke up; they set out in three lifeboats in April, 1916. All three made it to Elephant Island. Shackleton then took five other men with him in a boat on a 1,300 km journey to the island of South Georgia. Here three of them trekked for 36 hours until they reached a whaling station. They were then able to pick up their three companions. Finally, after four attempts Shackleton rescued the Elephant Island party on August 30.

Searches for the Wreck

In 2001 David Mearns unsuccessfully planned an expedition to find the wreck of the Endurance. An expedition using autonomous underwater vehicles took place in 2018-2019. In early 2022 a new expedition called Endurance22 was launched by Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust (FMHT), using a South African icebreaker (Agulhas II) and Saab submersible technology.

Discovery

After two weeks of combing the area, the team located the Endurance 3 km down at the bottom of the Weddell Sea. The wreck was found 6.4 km south of the location calculated by the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition’s navigator Capt. Frank Worsley.

Marine archaeologist Mensun Bound is quoted in a BBC News article: “Without any exaggeration this is the finest wooden shipwreck I have ever seen – by far.”

Under the international Antarctic Treaty the wreck may not be disturbed in any way. Instead of taking physical artifacts the team photographed the wreck in minute detail, inclusing ultra high definition 3D scanning.

In the words of mission leader Dr. John Shears: “We have successfully completed the world’s most difficult shipwreck search, battling constantly shifting sea-ice, blizzards, and temperatures dropping down to -18C. We have achieved what many people said was impossible.”

For more info and images, see this article.