Finding the Endurance: History & Discovery of Shackleton’s Ship
By: By Classic Boat -September 24, 2024
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Finding the Endurance: History & Discovery of Shackleton’s Ship
Credit: Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust and Nick Birtwistle
In 2022 Shackleton’s ship, the Endurance, was found after 207 years lost below the surface. John Greeves deep dives into Shackleton’s Endurance22 mission and the discovery of the wreck…
The discovery of Ernest Shackleton’s ship the Endurance in 2022 revealed once again the irrepressible and determined story of one of the most charismatic leaders who in a moment of tragedy, when all seemed lost, showed how strong resolve, optimism and humanity can reign supreme in overcoming even the darkest times.
The ship was lost 109 years ago and was discovered below the surface in the Weddell Sea, at a depth of 3,000 metres, four miles south of the position originally recorded by its Captain Frank Worsley. The 144 foot ship was crushed by sea ice and sank 21 November 1915, but was found wonderfully preserved sitting in an upright position on the seabed.
Endurance22 mission’s leader, the veteran polar geographer Dr John Shears said “The discovery of the wreck is an incredible achievement,” and then added “We have successfully completed the world’s most difficult shipwreck search, battling constantly shifting sea-ice, blizzards, and temperatures down to -18C. We have achieved what many people would say was impossible.”
One could argue that all four Shackleton’s Antarctic expeditions ended in a series of failures but this diminishes the man himself and says little of his immeasurable courage, determination and incomparable endurance he displayed throughout his life.
Endurance’s final moments
Ernest Shackleton was born in County Kildare in Ireland to an English father and an Irish mother. When he was 10 years old, the family moved back to London and was schooled at Dulwich College in south-east London. Although his father hoped his son would become a doctor, Ernest had other ideas and joined the merchant navy aged 16 in 1890 to satisfy his passion for the sea and adventure.
On the first expedition in 1901 to 1904, Captain Scott chose him as third officer for an attempt on the South Pole but Shackleton was sent home on grounds of ill health. He failed to finish the expedition much to Scott’s annoyance who made some harsh remarks about his performance. According to Scott’s unedited diary found on his body months after he perished in Antarctica’s Ross Ice Shelf, Shackleton wasn’t alone in being singled out, many others around Scott’s also incurred his fickle displeasure.
Five years later Shackleton led his own expedition to the South Pole but turned his party back when he was only 97 geographical miles from the South Pole, knowing that while they had sufficient food supplies to reach the pole, they did not have enough to make it back. He and his three companions set new record 88°23’S in being the most advance to the pole in exploration history at that time. They had come the closest to the South Pole in 1907, but as Shackleton later wrote; “I chose life over death for myself and my friends. For these achievements, Shackleton was knighted by King Edward VII on his return home. Roald Amundsen reached the pole in December 1911 five weeks before Scott in January 1912.
Now Shackleton looked around for a new challenge and resolved to make the first crossing of the Antarctic via the pole.The plan was to cross the vast Antarctic ice sheet to the south pole, and then keep going to the Ross Sea on the other side of the continent.
Shackleton Epic Map. Credit Royal Geographic Society Shackleton Epicxxx
The Trans-Antarctica Expedition as it was called is perhaps one of the greatest story of exploration, peril, leadership and survival ever told. Shackleton famously lost his ship but saved his crew of 26 men. When recruiting for this expedition, Shackleton received over 5000 applicants. Among his many requirements (mostly to do with personal abilities and skills) was the ability of the candidate bizarrely to hold a tune in his head. Shackleton also recruited 69 dogs for the expedition. Macklin was one of two surgeons on Endurance and helped train the dogs. Macklin also kept a detailed record of what happened after the ship became trapped in the ice.
Dogs being fed on the ice next to the Endurance
The Endurance set sail from South Georgia in December 1914, heading for Vahsel Bay on the eastern side of the Weddell Sea but soon encountered polar pack ice. By early January the ship had become stuck off the Caird coast and drifted for 10 months before being crushed in the pack ice. Macklin wrote in his dairy:
“Shackleton, at this time, showed one of his sparks of real greatness. He did not rage at all, or show outwardly the slightest sign of disappointment.”
Credit Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust and Nick Birtwistle
“He told us, simply and calmly, that we must winter in the Pack; explained its dangers and possibilities; never lost his optimism and prepared for winter.”
The crew had to decamp on the ice after they had removed the ship’s stores and provisions and more importantly three open life boats before Endurance finally sank on 21 November 1915.
The party continued to camp on the ice floes for a further five months. Even in moments of despair, Shackleton maintained spirits and nurtured a strong team ethic. He encouraged singing, seal-scouting trips, exploratory hikes and lantern slide lectures and games and for his men to look out for one another. He inspired loyalty and over came any dissent with a calm demeanour while he maintained a quiet discipline throughout the crew. Most importantly he instilled in them the belief they would survive despite being stranded on the ice for months. On Mayday, the sun disappeared entirely and was not seen again for the next four months
The following April the crew finally took to the lifeboats, rowing to the desolate and uninhabited Elephant Island. The men were exhausted, some afflicted by seasickness and others with dysentery.
After nine days of convalescence Shackleton, Worsley and four others, set forth again, sailing in one of the open life boats across 800 miles of rough seas and freezing winds to South Georgia. It took sixteen horrendous days in an open boat where they combatted huge turbulent waves and grey threatening skies.
Despite this extraordinary effort to reach South Georgia, their journey wasn’t over and Shackleton and two other of the men then crossed peaks and glaciers to reach the whaling station on the other side of the island. In recounting this experience Shackleton said:
“When I look back at those days I have no doubt that Providence guided us, not only across those snowfields, but across the storm-white sea that separated Elephant Island from our landing-place on South Georgia. I know that during that long and racking march of thirty-six hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia it seemed to me often that we were four, not three. I said nothing to my companions on the point, but afterwards Worsley said to me, ‘Boss, I had a curious feeling on the march that there was another person with us.’ Crean confessed to the same idea. One feels ‘the dearth of human words, the roughness of mortal speech’ in trying to describe things intangible, but a record of our journeys would be incomplete without a reference to a subject very near to our hearts.”
In August the remaining crewmen were rescued from Elephant Island with no loss of life.
In 1922, Shackleton launched a new expedition to the Antarctic, called the Shackleton-Rowett Antarctic Expedition. The goal was to circumnavigate the continent, but while his ship was docked at the harbour in South Georgia he died of a heart attack, 5 January aged 47 and is buried at Grytviken on the island.
One hundred years later on the anniversary of Shackleton’s death, the SA Agulhas II – a South African ice-breaking ship departed from Cape Town on 5 February, with a crew of 46 and a team of scientists, engineers, surveyors and a media unit including Dan Snow who was on board to document the Endurance II Expedition set off to find Shackleton’s Endurance. A previous attempt to find Endurance three years ago had failed. The project to find the lost ship was mounted by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust (FMHT) and was financed to the sum of £8 million by an anonymous donor. Donald Lamont, Chairman of the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust, said
Credit: Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust and Nick Birtwistle
“Our objectives for Endurance 22 were to locate, survey and film the wreck but also to conduct important scientific research and to run an exceptional outreach programme.”
Scientific research centred on climate change and related studies, with research into ice drifts, weather conditions of the Weddell Sea and sea ice thickness. Even the mapping sea ice from space was undertaken. Meanwhile the FMHT partnered with Reach the World, the US based educational organisation, and the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) successfully connected with tens of thousand of children throughout the expedition via live streams and materials produced for classroom use through their Educational outreach programme.
The search team used advanced underwater technology to locate the wreckage. A specially built hybrid Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUVs) called Sabertooths were fitted with High-Definition cameras and side -scan imaging capability. Which can search and map huge patches of the ocean floor up to 4,000m.
Sub-sea team of Endurance22 expedition and crew of S.A.Agulhas II recover the AUV after the last dive in the Weddell Sea, taking pictures and videos of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ship the Endurance. 20220307, Esther Horvath
Endurance was discovered by the Sabertooth-hybrid underwater search vehicles after an extensive two week search at a depth of 3,008 m. Dr John Sears mission leader described the discovery of the wreck as an “incredible achievement.” “We have successfully completed the world’s most difficult shipwreck search, battling constantly sea-ice, blizzards, and temperatures dropping down to -18. We have achieved what many said was impossible.”
The ship looks much as it did when it was photographed for the last time by Shackleton’s film-maker Frank Hurley in 1915. For the onlooker there’s damage to the bow, the rigging is tangled but the hull remains largely intact.
Photo, video and a laser pictures of Endurance22 displayed in the control room of the AUV on board of S.A.Agulhas II. 20220307, Esther Horvath
“We are overwhelmed by our good fortune in having located and captured images of Endurance. This is the finest wooden shipwreck I have ever seen. It is upright, well proud of the seabed, intact , and in a brilliant state of preservation. You can even see the ship’s name ENDURANCE arched across its stern directly below the taffrail. And beneath, as bold as brass, is Polaris the five pointed star, after which the ship was originally named,” says Mensun Bounds, marine archaeologist and Director of Exploration.
The timbers are extremely well preserved as the Antarctic seabed does not have any wood-eating micro-organism and the clarity of the water is quite remarkable. The ship is, according to Dr Michelle Taylor from Essex University like a ghost ship and, “Sprinkled with an impressive diversity of deep-sea marine life-stalked sea squirts, anemones, sponges of various forms, brittlestars, crinoids (related to urchins and sea stars) all filter feeding nutrition from the cool deep waters of the Weddell Sea.”
Dan Snow. Credit: Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust and Nick Birtwistle
Apart from these creatures no one is allowed to touch, or attempt to lift the Endurance or any of its artefacts from the Seabed. The search will remain non intrusive and no samples will be taken from the ship or surrounding seabed. Here it will lie as a designated monument under the international Antarctic Treaty, just as it sank to the sea bed over 100 years ago with its last movement literally freeze- framed in time.
Dr John Shears in summing up the success of the current expedition, said: “The Endurance22 has reached its goal. We have made polar history with the discovery of Endurance, and successfully completed the world’s most challenging shipwreck search. In addition, we have undertaken important research in a part of the world that directly affect the global climate and environment. We have also conducted an unprecedented educational outreach programme, with live broadcasting from on board, allowing new generations from around the world to engage with Endurance22 and become inspired by the amazing stories of polar exploration, and what human beings can achieve and the obstacles they can overcome when they work together.”
Menson Bound, Director of Exploration of Endurance22 expedition (l) and John Shears, Expedition Leader (r) on the sea ice of Weddell Sea, in the Antarctoc with S.A.Agulhas II in the background. Credit: Esther Horvath
Since discovering the Endurance in 2022, the protection perimeter drawn around the wreck has been widened from a radius of 500m to 1,500m. Part of a newly published conservation management plan, this new preservation measure will protect the great shipwreck and her story.
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Take a break and enjoy a story of adventure, and Endurance. When I was 13, one of the three books my uncle gave me was Scott of the Antarctic. I don't remember the story at all, but Scott is referred to in this article.
Fascinating story!
Maybe only those who love adventure may think so. I not only love adventure, I moved to China to greatly experience it, and I have been much rewarded in that regard.
I guess this was too long a story for most.
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