SOUNDINGS

No. 09 · Polar ship, barquentine with steam

Endurance

Lost 21 November 1915 · Weddell Sea · 3,008 m

Shackleton's ship was crushed by Antarctic ice in 1915; every one of her crew survived, and she was found almost intact three kilometres down in 2022.

Flag
United Kingdom (Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition)
Built
Framnæs, Sandefjord, Norway, 1912
Length
44 m
Aboard
28 men
Lives lost
none
Survived
all 28
Position
68°44.4′ S, 52°19.8′ W
Lies at
3,008 m, mud
Weddell SeaANTARCTIC PENINSULA65°W60°W55°W50°W45°W40°W70°S0100 nautical milesEndurance3,008 mN
Weddell Sea, Antarctica, crushed in the pack ice.
Endurance under sail trying to break through pack ice, Weddell Sea
Endurance under sail trying to break through pack ice, Weddell Sea. Frank Hurley, 1915 · Public domain

Ernest Shackleton meant to land a party on Antarctica and cross the continent on foot. His ship never reached the coast. This is the one wreck in the atlas where everyone came home.

Cause. Held in the Weddell Sea pack for ten months, she was crushed by the pressure of the ice and sank after the crew had moved onto the floe.

Plate · elevation, starboard side

The ship

AB

Load waterline

A The foremast with its square yards, and the bow
B Deckhouses and the funnel

Elevation, starboard side

The last hours

Ship drawn to scale; the water below is not.

  1. 5 December 1914

    From South Georgia

    The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition sailed for the Weddell Sea.

  2. 18–19 January 1915

    Frozen in

    Within about a day's sail of the coast she was caught in the pack ice and could not break free. She drifted with the ice through the polar winter.

  3. October 1915

    The ice presses in

    As spring came, the moving ice squeezed the hull, twisted her stern and opened leaks the pumps could not hold.

  4. 27 October 1915

    Abandon ship

    Shackleton ordered everyone onto the ice with the boats, stores and dogs. They made camp on the floe nearby.

  5. 21 November 1915

    She goes

    The crushed ship slipped under the ice stern first while the men watched from their camp. Captain Frank Worsley recorded her position.

  6. April–August 1916

    Every man saved

    The crew reached Elephant Island in three boats. Shackleton sailed on for help to South Georgia, and all 28 men were rescued, the last on 30 August 1916.

500 m · 273 fm
1,000 m · 547 fm
1,500 m · 820 fm
2,000 m · 1,094 fm
2,500 m · 1,367 fm

Below about 200 m almost all sunlight is gone. This is where the twilight zone begins.

Below 1,000 m no sunlight reaches at all: the midnight zone. The only light is made by living things.

At 3,008 m the pressure is about 302 times what it is at the surface.

1The wheel, still standing2Foremast, fallen over the bow3Mainmast, broken4Name on the stern: ENDURANCE
  1. The wheel, still standing
  2. Foremast, fallen over the bow
  3. Mainmast, broken
  4. Name on the stern: ENDURANCE

Elevation, starboard side, as found.M mud · 3,008 m

As found

Where she lies

She sits upright and largely intact, her name still clear across the stern and her wheel standing. There are no wood-eating shipworms in these waters. Some masts and rigging have fallen and her bow shows damage from the ice. She lay roughly four nautical miles from Worsley's recorded position.

Found

Found on 5 March 2022 by the Endurance22 expedition of the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust, using underwater robots launched from the icebreaker S.A. Agulhas II.

Today

A Protected Historic Site and Monument under the Antarctic Treaty: she may be filmed and surveyed but not touched.

Sources