A Great Outdoor Epic: Sunken Ship Lost for 107 Years is Found

Over 100 years after it sank in the Southern Ocean, Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ship HMS Endurance has been found 3,008 metres deep in the Weddell Sea. It’s located south of the Falkland Islands, along the northern coast of Antarctica.

The boat, which sank in 1915, was discovered in a collaboration between the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust and History Hit.

“This is by far the finest wooden shipwreck I have ever seen. It is upright, well proud of the seabed, intact, and in a brilliant state of preservation,” Mensun Bound, director of exploration, said in a statement. “This is a milestone in polar history.”

Shackleton was a famous explorer who made made a total of four expeditions toward Antarctica with the hopes of reaching the South Pole. His ship, Endurance, got stuck in thick ice in the Weddell Sea. The 28 men on board, including Shackleton himself, abandoned ship and set up rudimentary camps on ice floes that were floating northward.

They made it to the uninhabited Elephant Island, from where they took a lifeboat to South Georgia Island and the Stromness whaling station, which was then populated by the Norwegians.

While the expedition was a failure, Shackleton and his team’s survival is seen as a triumph. Shackleton died on South Georgia Island in 1947 and is buried there.

Endurance Found