Endurance Discovered
A team of international explorers has found Ernest Shackleton’s fabled ship, Endurance, stunningly preserved at the bottom of the Weddell Sea
Originally christened Polaris (North Star) with a large star-shaped badge on her stern, Endurance was a three-masted barquentine, 44m long, 7.6m in the beam and 348 tonnes. As well as sails, she was powered by a 260kW coal-fired steam engine capable of speeds up to 10 knots.
She was designed for polar conditions and built at the Framnæs shipyard in Sandefjord, Norway, with every detail of her sturdy timber construction scrupulously executed to ensure maximum strength and durability. When launched in 1912, she was perhaps the strongest wooden ship ever built, with the possible exception of Fram, the vessel used by Fridtjof Nansen and later by Roald Amundsen.
Ernest Shackleton purchased the vessel in 1914 and had her modified and refitted for service in the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. She was rechristened Endurance after the Shackleton family motto, Fortitudine vincimus (By endurance we conquer), but retained the Polestar badge.
The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914-15)
The aim of Shackleton’s expedition was to achieve the first land crossing of the Antarctic continent from the Weddell Sea via the South Pole to the Ross Sea. Endurance sailed from Plymouth on 6 August 1914, with a crew of 27 men (and one cat) under the command of Captain Frank Worsley. After brief stops at Buenos Aires (Argentina) and the whaling station at Grytviken (South Georgia), the expedition set course for Vahsel Bay on the Antarctic coast.
On 18 January 1915, deep in the Weddell Sea and within sight of their destination, Endurance became trapped in dense pack ice. The men remained living on board the ship as it drifted slowly northward with the floe until 27 October 1915 when they were forced to abandon it and set up a makeshift camp on the ice. Gradually, the enormous pressure of the ice movements crushed the ship’s hull, and, on 21 November 1915, Endurance finally broke up and sank with her Blue Ensign flying from a foremast yardarm. Worsley recorded the coordinates of the location in his diary at 68°39’ 30”S, 52°26’30”W.
The crew’s epic journey to Elephant Island, and eventual rescue on 30 August 1916, remains one of the most incredible stories of courage and survival in the history of polar exploration.
The Endurance22 Project
Organised and funded by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust, the ‘Endurance22 Project’ was established to locate and survey the wreck of Endurance using state-of-the-art undersea technology.
The Project brought together an international team of marine archaeologists, engineers and sea-ice scientists on the South African Government-owned polar research and logistics vessel S.A. Agulhas II. Built in Finland in 2012, the Polar Class 5 vessel is one of the largest and most modern research ships in the world. The 134m Agulhas II is powered by a 12,000kW diesel-electric system capable of breaking through metre-thick ice at five knots.
The Project expedition departed Cape Town, South Africa, on 5 February 2022, and navigated through heavy sea ice, freezing temperatures and harsh weather to carry out “the world’s most complex and challenging shipwreck search”. Along the way, the scientific team conducted studies of the ice to advance an understanding of the Antarctic environment and how it influences the planet’s changing climate.
Endurance Discovered
After days of scanning the ocean floor with a SAAB Sabertooth AUV (Autonomous Underwater Vehicle), Endurance was discovered on 5 February 2022 — one hundred years to the day after Shackleton was laid to rest on South Georgia Island. She was lying upright on the seabed at a depth of 3008 metres, approximately four miles south of the position recorded by Captain Worsley on the day she sank. Although there was clearly pressure damage to the fo’c’sle deck and part of her starboard side, Endurance was largely intact and in an excellent state of preservation.
Announcing the discovery of “the finest wooden shipwreck” he had ever seen, Mensun Bound, Director of Exploration on the expedition, said, “This is a milestone in polar history. However, it is not all about the past. 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.”
The wreck of Endurance is protected as an Historic Site and Monument under the Antarctic Treaty.
For more information about the Endurance22 Project go to endurance22.org/.