Secrets under the ice: explorers release footage of Shackleton’s shipwreck

Anglo-Irish explorer Ernest Shackleton set out on an epic journey in 1914 to attempt the first land crossing of Antarctica. But his ship Endurance got stuck in the ice and sank in the Weddell sea, forcing the crew to abandon the mission. An expedition this week found the wreck and has released remarkable footage of it 3000m below the surface of the Weddell Sea.

In this photo issued by Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust, a view of the stern of the wreck of Endurance, polar explorer's Ernest Shackleton's ship, which sank in 1915. It was found on March 9, 2022. © Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust / AP

"We are overwhelmed by our good fortune in having located and captured images of Endurance," said Mensun Bound, the expedition's director of exploration, on Wednesday.

The expedition, organised by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust, left Cape Town on 5 February with a South African icebreaker, the S.A Agulhas II. A similar mission, organised in 2019 failed to find the wreck.

"This is by far 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 'Endurance' arced across the stern," he said in a statement.

Endurance was discovered at a depth of 3,008 metres in the Weddell Sea, about six kilometres from where it sank on the Antarctic peninsula in 1915.

Using underwater drones, known as Sabertooths, built by Saab, the team were able to retrieve extremely clear images of the 44-metre-long ship.

The helm remains intact after more than a century underwater as does the timber. The wreck is now home to sea anemones, sponges and other small ocean life forms.

Under international law, the wreck is protected as a historic site. Explorers were allowed to film and scan the ship, but not to touch it meaning no artefacts could be brought to the surface.

Sir Ernest Shackleton, noted British explorer and writer, is shown as he arrived in New York on the Aquitania, on a hurried business trip to Canada, Jan. 30, 1921. AP

'Worst sea in the world'

The Endurance crew was meant to make the first land crossing of Antarctica as part of Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition between 1914 and 1917.

But their three-masted vessel became caught in pack ice in January 1915.

The crew waited nine months for a thaw, a period captured on film by Australian photographer Frank Hurley.

But the ship was slowly being crushed, so Shackleton ordered an evacuation. The ship sank a month later.

Shackleton himself described the site of the sinking as "the worst portion of the worst sea in the world".

At first the crew first camped on the sea ice, drifting northwards until the ice cracked open, and then took to lifeboats.They set up a camp on nearby Elephant Island, an icy outcrop.

"There they found drinking water, food, especially penguins," Jérôme Chappellaz, director of the French Polar Institute described in an interview with the Journal du Dimanche.

"But their problem was unchanged. How to escape from there?"

Using just a sextant for navigation, Shackleton took five of his crew in 6.9 metre open boat on a 1,300-kilometre voyage to South Georgia, a British colony where there was a whaling station.

Optimism, rescue

After a 17-day crossing, they found themselves on the wrong side of the island and they had to trek across mountainous terrain for 150 kilometres before finding help.

Shackleton convinced some Chileans working on the island to lend him a boat to rescue the others, which he did. It took four months.

"They had nothing left except their faith in Shackleton to come back and fetch them," Jean-Louis Etienne, a French explorer who visited Antarctica in 1991 told the Journal du Dimanche.

The others could hardly believe their eyes when they were later picked up and brought to dry land. All 28 expedition members survived.

"Optimism is moral courage in its most pure form," Shackleton was fond of saying. 

However, the mission, while it brought him a degree of fame, heavily indebted him.

He returned to South Georgia where he died from a heart attack only a few years later, in 1922.

The current expedition is now on its way back to Cape Town, where scientists will begin analysing ice and snow samples as part of research on climate change, documenting ice drifts and weather patterns.

The Maritime Museum in London has opened a special exhibition marking the 100 years since Shackleton's death, with numerous items from his expeditions on display.