The wreck of Endurance has been found in the Antarctic, 106 years after the historic ship was crushed in pack ice and sank during an expedition by the explorer Ernest Shackleton.
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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.
Endurance, a 144-foot, three-masted wooden ship, holds a revered place in polar history because it spawned one of the greatest survival stories in the annals of exploration.
Ernest Shackleton Nationality
Shackleton was British.
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Ernest Shackleton Facts
Shackleton’s first Antarctica expedition was with Robert Falcon Scott – on the ‘Discovery’ Expedition of 1901-1904. Shackleton was sent home on medical grounds (heart problems, reputedly) and didn’t finish the expedition.
Ernest Shackleton worked, for a time, as the secretary of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, in his native Kildare county, as well as a journalist.
When recruiting for his Antarctic expedition, Shackleton received over 5000 applicants and chose just 26.
Ernest Shackleton Advertisement
Sometime in the early 20th century, Shackleton needed to hire a crew for an upcoming expedition to the South Pole. So he placed a newspaper ad:
“Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness.”
Ernest Shackleton Shipwreck
Shackleton embarked on one Antarctic expedition with the Ship ‘Endurance’, but it did not return.
The endurance closed up with ice moulds. For two days and nights every endeavour was made to cut the ship free but the temperature continued to fall and the ice which was broken, froze again, and matters in the end were worse than before.
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