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| Endurance attempting to break free of pack ice (public domain photo - Wikipedia) |
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| Ernest Shakleton (public domain photo, Wikipedia) |
From Buenos Aires, Endurance sailed for the whaling station at Grytviken on the island of South Georgia. From there, she headed for the Weddell Sea, on the South Atlantic side of Antarctica.
Endurance had been built specifically to withstand polar ice, originally intended to be used by arctic hunting or tourist expeditions. By the time she was launched from her drydock at the Framnæs shipyard in Sandefjord, Noway on December 17th, 1912, it was believed she was quite possibly the strongest ship ever built during that period.
At the time of her construction, there were two types of hulls being used for ships which would sail in and around the ice flows. Bowl shaped hulls were designed to be pushed upwards by the squeezing action of an ice flow as it was forming around the ship. The second type was in many respects just a reinforced version of a standard sailing ship hull, with the advantage being that this type of structure could break and push through the crushing ice packs, formations which would stop the progress of a ship with a bowl-shaped hull.This second hull type was the one chosen for Endurance.
After two days at sea, making her way towards the landing point at Vashell Bay, Endurance entered her first ice pack. It wouldn't be the last time she encountered these arctic formations of frozen water and she slowly but steadily made her way through it, pushing closer to her final destination.
Unfortunately for Endurance, her crew and the expedition, the ship would never reach its intended destination. As it approached Vashell Bay, the pack ice became much thicker, forcing forward progress to slow to a crawl and then finally stop altogether. With her forward momentum completely halted, Endurance now functioned as an ice-bound shore station, as it could no longer move at all under its' own power.
The Endurance would never again move freely within Arctic ice fields or on the open sea. As weeks turned into months, ice packs surrounding the ship gradually became too much to bear, even for her reinforced structure. Pressure within the vast, shifting sheets of ice holding Endurance in their grip gradually grew stronger. As they moved, grinding their way across the frozen horizon, pressure waves formed within them. They carried Endurance with her, drifting from one location to the next. As the pent up forces generated by these waves were released, they battered the wooden ship, eventually breaking her stern and bow sections, which brought torrents of freezing sea water into her hull, causing Endurance to slowly begin sinking.
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| The sinking of Endurance, November 1915 (public domain photo, Wikipedia) |
Shackleton and his crew tried in vain to stop the flooding and repair the damage. Endurance, however, had been mortally wounded and they had no choice but to abandon her to the sad fate which awaited her. They now had to to try and rescue themselves. However, before they left the Endurance, Shackleton had members of the crew hoist the ships blue ensign up the mizzen mast so that, as Shackleton was quoted as saying, she would "go down with colours flying."
Fortunately for Ernest Shakleton and the exhausted members of the expedition, they were eventually able to make their way to safety and ultimately back to England. In addition, the crew was able to salvage and return with priceless research (including photographs) which had been accumulated during the voyage and the months trapped in the pack ice.
On 03.05.22, it was confirmed by The Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust that the wreck of Endurance had been located by Endurance22, a search team led by Dr. John Shears, Polar explorer and geographer.
The wreck, which is currently protected as a Historic Site and Monument under the Antarctic Treaty System, was explored using SAAB's deep-water capable Sabertooth hybrid underwater search AUV/ROV vehicles, which were brought to the wreck site aboard the polar research and logistocs ship S.A. Agulhas II, owned by the South African Department of Forestry, Fisheries and Environment and under Master, Capt. Knowledge Bengu.
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| Sabertooth hybrid AUV/ROV (image courtesy of SAAB) |
In a March 09 press release, Endurance22 announced that Endurance had been located in the Weddell Sea at a depth of 3008 meters (9,869 t.).
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