The Endurance: Discovery of Shackleton's Legendary Shipwreck and the Preservation Debate

The Endurance was the vessel that took Ernest Shackleton to the Southern Ocean in an attempt to cross Antarctica during the Great War. Unfortunately, the project was cut short when the ship became trapped in sea ice in the Weddell Sea, and the crew abandoned its uncertain fate in late 1915. A concerted effort to locate the wreck a hundred years later was finally successful in March 2022. However, difficulties in accessing the Endurance and disagreement over what to do with its hull continue to cloud the future.

In 1912, a Norwegian shipyard constructed the Polaris as an ice vessel for polar exploration. The three-masted barquentine had a cladded hull reinforced with hardwood to withstand the pressures of ice floes. In addition, the ship harbored a small auxiliary coal-fired engine to assist its progress. Shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, experienced explorer Ernest Shackleton (1874-1922) acquired the vessel for a planned trans-Antarctic exploration. After Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole in 1911, crossing the icy continent was one of the last ventures for polar explorers. True to his family motto, “By Endurance We Conquer,” Shackleton promptly renamed the vessel. The Endurance left England in 1914 just as the Guns of August were turning Europe into an extensive battlefield. Arriving in South Georgia in October, Shackleton’s expedition readied for its primary mission. In December, the Endurance entered the Weddell Sea and found its progress increasingly impeded by sea ice. In January 1915, the vessel, surrounded by ice floes, became trapped and was slowly carried northward. Over the following months, the surrounding ice exposed the Endurance to enormous pressures.

Although the hull’s reinforcement managed to withstand the increasing impact of ice floes, the stress slowly crushed the vessel. On November 21, 1915, Shackleton and his crew of twenty-seven men decided it would be safer to leave the Endurance and take their chances by first reaching Elephant Island. Shackleton and five additional crewmembers ventured to South Georgia, home of a populated whaling station. The final rescue of Shackleton and the people left behind on Elephant Island in the summer of 1916 became the stuff of legends. Much ink would be spilled over this episode, bringing the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration to a close. Despite failing to accomplish his main task, Shackleton’s mission is perhaps best remembered for beating the odds and not losing a single expedition member. Following his return and the end of the Great War, the Antarctic explorer would set out on a final venture to the Antarctic. Already in failing health, Shackleton suffered a fatal heart attack on January 5, 1922. His remains are buried on South Georgia Island.

Sinking to the bottom of the Wedell Sea, the Endurance remained undisturbed for more than 100 years. Then, in 2019, the Netherlands-based charity Flotilla Foundation sponsored a project by the Royal Geographical Society to explore the Weddell Sea, which included the location of Shackleton’s ship. Unfortunately, while the expedition provided much information about this challenging region of the Southern Ocean, the arrival of the Antarctic winter and the destruction of the submersible employed to map the ocean floor interrupted the search for the Endurance.

With the subsiding Covid-19 pandemic, a second search for the ship was launched in 2022, named Endurance 22. The expedition employed the same South African icebreaker, the S. A. Agulhas II, that went on the search three years earlier. Rather than exploring the Weddell Sea, this expedition’s narrower aim was the location of Shackleton’s ship. The London-based Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust, aided by a sizable anonymous donation, financed the entire endeavor. The trust had made a name for itself by searching for ViceAdmiral Maximilian von Spee’s East Asia Squadron. In December 1914, a British fleet intercepted and sank most German vessels near the Falkland Islands. In December 2019, the organization was able to locate Spee’s flagship, the SMS Scharnhorst.

The search for further German vessels was placed on hold due to the pandemic and the impending push forward with the search for the Endurance. British maritime archaeologist Mensun Bound, who hailed from the Falkland Islands, attempted to locate the vessel by combing through logs and accounting for early twentieth-century navigational equipment errors. This time, the search proved successful, and in March 2022, images of the Endurance appeared on the monitors. As expected, the vessel, despite its initial damage by ice floes, seemed intact, sitting at about 3,000 meters (close to 10,000 feet) below the water’s surface. Even if the wreck was entirely made of wood, the freezing waters of the Weddell Sea prevented its consumption by shipworms that threatened similar ships in warmer waters. According to the Antarctic Treaty signed in 1959, the Endurance became a protected historical site and monument. It can be filmed and surveyed, but no person can set foot on the wreck or remove artifacts from the site.

In October 2022, controversy about the Endurance emerged. Mensun Bound maintained that although wood-eating organisms spared the wreck, the wooden structure would not remain intact past this generation. He thus brought up the issue of whether the Endurance should be raised from its icy grave. Besides the logistical problems of bringing up the hull in the tricky Southern Ocean waters, political issues emerging from the Antarctic treaty would also cloud the effort. For example, it would have to be decided what museum would host the Endurance in which country before any salvage attempt could occur. Similarly, Alexandra Shackleton, the explorer’s granddaughter, expressed her dissatisfaction with raising the ship from the depths while continuing to access it through film and surveys, leaving the wreck undisturbed. Rainer F Buschmann

FURTHER READING:Bound, Mensun. 2023. The Ship Beneath the Ice: The Discovery of Shackleton’s Endurance. New York: Harper and Collins. “The Endurance will “Decay Out of Existence” Unless Ship is Raised from Sea.” The Guardian, October 7, 2022.

Falkland Maritime Heritage Trust. “Official Website.” https://fmht.co.uk/. Accessed April 30, 2023.

Worsley, F. A. 2000 [1931]. Endurance: An Epic Polar Adventure. New York: W W Norton & Co.