HMS Endurance

The ship commanded by the Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton, trapped in the ice and sunk in the Weddell Sea in 1915, has been located at a depth of 3,000 meters.

A team of marine archaeologists who for several weeks have been trying to locate the remains of the Endurance, the ship of the Imperial Transatlantic Expedition commanded by Ernest Shackleton that sank in Antarctica in 1915 after spending ten months trapped in the ice, has just announced to the world its discovery.

THE “ENDURANCE” FINALLY LOCATED

After several weeks of exhaustive searching aboard the SA Agulhas II, investigators located the remains of the ship some 3,000 meters deep, at the bottom of the Weddell Sea, in Antarctica, where all sources indicate that she had sunk. The expedition members arrived in the area on February 17 and began locating the missing ship using a minisubmarine.

The discovery of explorer Ernest Shackleton’s HMS Endurance

Polar explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship HMS Endurance has been located, apparently intact more than a century after it sank in the Weddell Sea, south of the Falkland Islands.

The expeditionaries arrived in the area on February 17 and carried out the work of locating the missing ship through the use of a mini-submarine.

The search party announced: “The Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust has the honor to confirm that the Endurance22 expedition, whose mission is to locate, survey and film the remains of the Endurance, has set sail from Cape Town for the Weddel Sea in the Antarctica”.

As the months passed, the ship suffered more and more from the pressure of the ice and towards the end of October 1915 Shackleton had no choice but to order the definitive abandonment of the ship.

The remains of the ship that Shackleton commanded are in an excellent state of preservation, with the wood still attached and the distinctive name still visible on the stern, as shown by the images that have been distributed.

It stands upright, proud of the seabed, intact and in a brilliant state of preservation. It is a milestone in polar history,” enthused Mensun Bound, expedition director.

This finding is the culmination of a long search that began in 2019 and has now, finally, managed to exceed all the expectations that the members of the expedition had placed on it.