Explorer Shackleton’s lost ship 'Endurance' discovered in Antarctic depths
Remarkable footage of the wreck shows it has been astonishingly preserved, with the ship’s wheel still intact and the name ‘Endurance’ still perfectly visible on the ship’s stern.
FollowExplorer Sir Ernest Shackleton’s lost ship The Endurance has been found in the Antarctic 107 years after the historic ship was crushed in pack ice and sank during an expedition. The discovery, called a “milestone of polar history”, Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust said the wooden ship, which had not been seen since it went down in the Weddell Sea in 1915, was found at a depth of 9,868 feet (3,008 metres).
Remarkable footage of the wreck shows it has been astonishingly preserved, with the ship’s wheel still intact and the name ‘Endurance’ still perfectly visible on the ship’s stern.
Endurance was one of the two ships used by the Imperial Trans-Antarctic expedition of 1914–1917. It was 144-foot-long and carried 28 men. The ship was popular for being the greatest ever undiscovered shipwrecks of all time. But after a century of speculations and theories, the lost vessel was found last weekend at the bottom of the Weddell Sea.
The mission to find Endurance in the Weddell Sea set off from Cape Town, South Africa, in February, a month after the 100th anniversary of Sir Ernest's death on a mission to locate it.
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A team of adventurers, marine archaeologists and technicians located the wreck at the bottom of the Weddell Sea, east of the Antarctic Peninsula, using undersea drones. Battling sea ice and freezing temperatures, the team had been searching for more than two weeks in a 150-square-mile area around where the ship went down in 1915.
Back in 1915, Sir Ernest Shackleton and his crew set out to achieve the first land crossing of Antarctica, but Endurance did not reach land and became trapped in dense pack ice, forcing the 28 men on board to eventually abandon ship.
The discovery of the wreck was announced Wednesday in a statement by the search expedition, Endurance22.
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