The hunt continues for Ernest Shackleton’s ship, the Endurance, located 10,000 feet below the icy Weddell Sea in Antarctica.
After an 11-day voyage aboard a South African icebreaker, the discovery, known as the expedition, endurance22This week, he began searching for the wreckage. Underwater drones equipped with cameras, sonar and lasers scan 100 square miles of seafloor in search of the remains of the 144-foot-long wooden ship that sank after being crushed in ice in 1915.
The expedition’s reconnaissance director, Mensun Bound, said in an email that after a few technical glitches, the submarines were working fine and performing several dives each day. The images show that the seafloor is flat and made up of fine sediments and small rocks. “It should be possible to detect any debris quickly,” he said.
Funded at a cost of more than $10 million by an anonymous donor, the expedition is about a week away from the icebreaker Agulhas II’s return to Cape Town.
But the expedition isn’t just searching for one of the most famous shipwrecks waiting to be discovered, a ship that holds a venerable place in the history of Antarctic exploration. There are researchers on board with a more forward-looking goal: They’re studying the Weddell Sea pack ice and looking for signs that it’s changing as the world warms as a result of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions.
The two helicopters on board were used to transport these scientists to the ice floes, where ice cores were drilled for later laboratory analysis.
Endurance was lost when transporting Shackleton and his 27 crew to Antarctica in an attempt to become the first person to cross the continent on foot. The sinking months after the ship was stranded in the ice floe dashed those hopes, but it resulted in one of the greatest stories of survival in the face of great hardship. Shackleton took some of his men on an epic small boat trip to the island of South Georgia, an 800-mile voyage where he organized the rescue of the entire crew. He returned to England as a hero.
As Shackleton learned firsthand, Weddell is famous for having thick, annual ice that is a function of the circular current of the sea. But expedition leader John Shears said the ice on the way to the search area wasn’t too bad. “Our transit was much faster than expected due to light ice conditions, as there was plenty of open waterline for the ship to maneuver,” he said.
Mr Bound said the ice in the search area was also not an obstacle. It is thin enough for the icebreaker’s propeller wash to create enough open water to launch divers. He said that while the search was in its early stages, the team had made good progress covering the search area.
Endurance’s captain, Frank Worsley, was able to use basic navigational tools to locate the ship when it finally sank. But Worsley’s time when he observed the sun at noon was delayed by about 10 minutes. With the analysis of this and other possible errors and the modeling of the possible slippage, a 7 to 14 mile search area was created.
If the remains of the ship are found, the submarines will take video and photos and make laser scans of the wreckage, which will most likely become the basis of museum exhibits and educational materials. However, the site classified as a site, historical monumentwill not be disturbed.
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The wreck is expected to be in relatively good condition, unlike other old wooden shipwrecks in warmer waters that are often consumed by marine organisms.
While it appears to show Endurance in pieces in photos taken before it sank by Shackleton’s photographer Frank Hurley, these were mostly poles and rig. Mr Bound and others said the hull was likely intact when the ship sank, but may have disintegrated when it hit the bottom.
The expedition team hopes to find out for sure soon. “With current sea ice conditions and well-performing submarines, we are optimistic that we will find Endurance,” Mr. Shears said.