In November 1915, Ernest Shackleton and his crew had to give up their ship “Endurance” after months of drifting in the pack ice of the Antarctic. It is known where the ship sank, but the wreck was never found. In a few months, an Antarctic expedition is set to search for the famous shipwreck again. A diving robot should be lowered under the ice and search the sea floor for the “endurance”.
British polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton’s endurance expedition went down in history. The aim of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, started in 1914, was to cross the Antarctic. To do this, Ernest Shackleton and his team were supposed to call at the Wedell Sea on the ship “Endurance” and start the crossing from the coast there. A second group headed for the Ross Sea on the opposite side with the “Aurora” and was supposed to meet the crossing team from there.
Hero story of Antarctic exploration
But the plan went spectacularly wrong: The Endurance was trapped by the pack ice in the Wedell Sea and Shackleton and his men drifted through the ice with their ship for months. At the end of October 1915, the pressure of the ice pressed the hull together so strongly that it broke, despite its particularly stable construction, and water ran into the interior. The crew then had to retrieve their supplies and equipment and leave the ship. They held out in a camp on the pack ice, in the hope that the ice would clear and rescue would soon arrive. On November 21, 1915, the “Endurance” finally sank, according to the expedition members, to 69 ° 05 ′ south latitude and 51 ° 30 ′ west longitude.
How Shackleton and his crew managed to leave the pack ice and reach land on foot and with the aid of the ship’s previously recovered lifeboats, and how they survived the adversities of Antarctica without a single man dying, is considered one of the greatest heroic stories to this day polar research. Although the course of the expedition is well documented by the team’s notes and pictures by the expedition photographer Frank Hurley, the further fate of the “Endurance” remained in the dark. Although the place of their sinking was known, the pack ice made the place largely inaccessible, so that the wreck of the famous ship has not yet been found. The last search for the wreck in 2019 also had to be canceled because the expedition ship threatened to be trapped in the ice.
New search for the “Endurance”
A new attempt is now being prepared. Launched by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust. In February 2022, a group of underwater archaeologists and polar researchers will set out for the Wedell Sea from Cape Town in South Africa on the research ship “Agulhas II”. The aim is to track down, map and film the wreck of the “Endurance”, which is supposed to be around 3000 meters below ground. Expedition leader Mensun Bound explains: “Trying to find the wreck of the Endurance is an immensely exciting undertaking that has long been considered impossible. In view of the harsh Antarctic environment, there is no guarantee of success for us either, but we are inspired by the great explorers of Antarctica. “
The plan is to lower a special diving robot from the ship into the water after arriving in the Wedell Sea. This hybrid autonomous underwater vehicle called “Sabertooth” is equipped with both high-resolution cameras and side-scan sonar. It can autonomously search the ocean floor down to depths of 4000 meters and transmit its data to the surface in real time. Should the ice above the likely location of the wreck be too thick to go to by ship, the expedition team plans to reach a camp or two on the ice. From these, the ice is then to be pierced and the diving robot lowered into the sea. According to Bound, the “endurance” should have survived relatively undisturbed on the seabed. Since there was hardly any erosion or landslides in this area and the sedimentation rate is low at less than one millimeter per year.
In what condition is the wreck?
“After two years of planning for this new mission, I think that we have a good chance of finding the wreck under the ice of the Wedell Sea,” says expedition leader John Shears, who led the previous expedition in 2019. “If we can really find the endurance, it will be a fantastic moment.” If the search is successful, one of the goals will be to find out the condition of the shipwreck. Because so far it is unclear whether the “Endurance” sank in one piece or whether it broke into two parts. The researchers also hope to receive images from inside the ship. These could show, for example, whether some of the photo plates left behind in 1915 are still there. The expedition could also show whether the microscope and glass sample containers of the ship’s biologist Robert Clark have survived.
Source: Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust