The Crew That Found Shackleton’s ‘Endurance’ Wasn’t Just Looking for a Sunken Ship
The team behind the shipwreck’s discovery sought more than just a shipwreck

Abigail Barronian
Mar 18, 2022

In January 1915, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship, Endurance, became icebound in the Antarctic. What happened next would become legend: Shackleton and his crew watched their ship slowly sink, survived a year and a half stranded on the ice, and eventually secured their own rescue with an 800-mile journey in an open lifeboat. Every member of the 28-man team survived.

Now, 106 years later, the wreck has been found, in remarkable condition, at a depth of nearly 10,000 feet in the Weddell Sea. An expedition team from the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust led by polar geographer John Shears located the wreck using an underwater autonomous vehicle on March 5, after a month at sea. They announced the discovery to the world four days later.

The mission to locate Endurance had other goals—ones that focused on environmental dynamics and scientific research that Shackleton and his men likely could have never envisioned a century ago. The crew spent nearly six weeks off the coast of Antarctica aboard the South African icebreaking polar research vessel Agulhas II, during which time scientists and researchers conducted studies on a wide range of topics, including maritime navigation and how the changing climate has affected ice levels around Antarctica.

“A lot of these snow and ice properties we measure here are needed to learn about the structure of the ice and snow in the Weddell Sea,” says Lasse Rabenstein, the expedition’s chief scientist. “It’s a complicated and special one, more complicated than other parts of the Antarctic or Arctic.”