FINDING Shackleton’s SHIP
Ernest Shackleton’s ship was consigned to deep Antarctic waters over a century ago. How did researchers locate and study the Endurance on the frigid seabed?
WORDS AILSA HARVEY
DID YOU KNOW?
Shackleton changed the ship’s name from Polaris, as his family motto was ‘by endurance we conquer’
Frank Wild, Shackleton, Eric Marshall and Jameson Adams
© Alamy / Shutterstock
Did you know?
The crew was stranded for almost two years
She’s gone, boys,” Shackleton told his crew as the Endurance sank below the Antarctic ice in the late afternoon of 21 November 1915. Led by Anglo-Irish explorer Ernest Shackleton, the Endurance sailed 26 crew members, 69 sled dogs and one cat on a mission to the South Pole to embark on a trans-Antarctic expedition. But the ship never reached the shore. Instead, it got trapped in the Weddell Sea’s vast ice sheets and succumbed to immense crushing pressures before sinking beneath the waves. Endurance would not be seen again for 107 years.