Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ship, Endurance, has been found in the Southern Ocean, 100 years to the day since the lead explorer was buried.
It’s still in “an astonishing state of preservation” according to the team who discovered it, despite being 3000 metres underwater for more than a century.
This find has been hailed as a significant feat because of the historic voyage the team first went on back in 1915.
Shackleton was a renowned polar explorer whose team aspired to find Antartica, but their hopes were dashed when the icy conditions trapped both the boat and the crew in sea ice for more than 10 months.
The team eventually escaped, some on foot and some in lifeboats, leaving the ship to be crushed by the polar ice and lost to the ocean.
Mensun Bound, the director of the Endurance22 exploration, declared the discovery a “milestone in polar history” and said the boat was “by far the finest wooden shipwreck” he had even seen.
Bound explained: “It is upright, well proud of the seabed, intact, and in a brilliant state of preservation. You can even see ‘Endurance’ arced across the stern, directly below the taffrail.”
He promised back in January that his team would do “everything we can” to find the ship and bring the story of her “final voyage” to people around the world.
Now it’s been uncovered, Bound said: “It is not all about the past; we are bringing the story of Shackleton and Endurance to new audiences, and to the next generation, who will be entrusted with the essential safeguarding of our polar regions and our planet.
“We hope our discovery will engage young people and inspire them with the pioneering spirit, courage and fortitude of those who sailed Endurance to Antarctica. We pay tribute to the navigational skills of Captain Frank Worsley, the captain of the Endurance, whose detailed records were invaluable in our quest to locate the wreck.”
Historian Dan Snow also accompanied the discovery expedition. He explained on Twitter that the ship was unearthed on Saturday, but “nothing was touched on the wreck” and “nothing retrieved”.
Back in January when the expedition was announced, Shackleton’s granddaughter Hon Alexandra Shackleton said: “My grandfather would have been amused and pleased that a century later there is a huge interest and he seems to appeal to a lot of different people.”
She recalled how, in a different expedition, he got within 97 miles of the South Pole.
Although Shackleton could have been the first there, he and his team were “in a bad state physically” and may have died upon arrival, according to his granddaughter.
She added: “He took the decision to turn back, which I regard as one of the great decisions in polar history and one I’m very proud of. He brought his men back alive.”
