11 March 2022 - Ernest Shackleton's lost ship found after 107 years
Famed shipwreck of Ernest Shackleton's Endurance found off Antarctica
(CBS News, 09/11/2022)
One of the world's most storied shipwrecks, Ernest Shackleton's Endurance, has been discovered off the coast of Antarctica more than a century after its sinking, explorers announced Wednesday.
Endurance was discovered at a depth of 9,869 feet in the Weddell Sea, about four miles from where it was slowly crushed by pack ice in 1915.
"We are overwhelmed by our good fortune in having located and captured images of Endurance," said Mensun Bound, the expedition's director of exploration.
Shackleton’s lost ship mission chief feared ‘running out of time’ in Antarctica
Ted Hennessey and Scott D'Arcy (Independent Ireland, 09/03/2022)
The crew that discovered the wreck of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s lost ship feared “running out of time” and becoming “trapped” in the Antarctic ice as temperatures dropped.
Endurance became stuck in ice and sank in the Weddell Sea off the coast of Antarctica in 1915 and had been lost until a mission vessel, launched in February, a month after the 100th anniversary of Sir Ernest’s death, located it.
The expedition’s director of exploration described the “strange day” he was alerted to the discovery just three days before the mission had to finish.
Lost and found: the extraordinary story of Shackleton’s Endurance epic
Harriet Sherwood (The Guardian, 09/03/2022)
The Endurance left South Georgia for Antarctica on 5 December 1914. Onboard were 27 crew members plus a stowaway, 69 dogs and one cat. Sir Ernest Shackleton, the expedition leader, was aiming to establish a base on Antarctica’s Weddell Sea coast and then keep going to the Ross Sea on the other side of the continent.
Within two days, the ship encountered the barrier of thick sea ice around the Antarctic continent. For several weeks, the Endurance made painstaking progress, but in mid-January a gale pushed the ice floes hard against one another and the ship was stuck – “frozen like an almond in the middle of a chocolate bar”, according to a crew member, Thomas Orde-Lees.
Shackleton’s legendary ship is finally found off the Antarctic Coast, a century later
Simon Worrall (National Geographic, 09/03/2022)
In the fall of 1915, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance sank off the coast of Antarctica, stranding its crew on drifting sea ice and setting in motion one of history’s most dramatic tales of overcoming seemingly hopeless odds. While all of the expedition’s 28 crew eventually were rescued, the ship’s final resting place has remained a much-discussed maritime mystery—the unwritten last chapter in a legendary story of survival and triumph. That is, until today. A team of researchers has announced they’ve located the wreck at the bottom of the treacherous Weddell Sea, adjacent to the northernmost part of Antarctica.
The first images of the ship were transmitted via autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) from nearly two miles down on March 5. As the camera glides over the wooden deck of the ship, video captures century-old ropes, tools, portholes, railings—even the masts and helm—all in nearly pristine condition due to cold temperatures, the absence of light, and low oxygen in the watery resting place."