It is a mythical wreck. That of theEndurance, the ship of British explorer Ernest Shackleton, broken by the ice in 1915 off Antarctica. She was found in the Weddell Sea at a depth of 3,000 meters, her discoverers announced on Wednesday March 9.
“We are very moved to have located and captured images of theEndurance »said Mensun Bound, director of the exploration expedition organized by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust. “This is by far the most beautiful wooden wreck I have ever seen. She stands tall, very proud on the seabed, intact, in a fantastic state of preservation”added the explorer. “You can even read his name, Enduranceinscribed in an arc on the stern”he rejoiced.
We have super high definition film of the wreck, multi beam sonar and a hugely accurate laser model. Nothing has be… https://t.co/kLCjNbP33H
The wreckage was found regarding six kilometers from the sinking site, its discoverers said. The search expedition – numbering around a hundred people – which left Cape Town on February 5 aboard a South African icebreaker, hoped to find the wreckage before the end of the austral summer.
Endurance left the British island of South Georgia in the South Atlantic at the end of 1914 to lead the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, led by Ernest Shackleton, which aimed to make the first crossing of the Antarctic continent, from Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea via the South Pole.
Rescue of the crew
But in January 1915 the ship found itself caught in the ice of the Weddell Sea, near the Larsen Ice Shelf. Imprisoned for months, the three-masted schooner of 44 meters was slowly broken by the ice, it sank on November 21, 1915, by 3,000 m deep.
The expedition became legendary because of the survival conditions of the crew, who camped for months on the pack ice, before it broke up, then joined by canoe the inhospitable and icy Elephant Island, facing the Antarctic Peninsula, where he found refuge.
Legendary also because of Shackleton’s daring journey: setting out on a canoe from theEndurance with a few companions to seek help as far as South Georgia, he will return to save his entire crew.
The Endurance22 expedition used advanced technology, including two underwater drones, to explore the area described by Shackleton himself as “the worst part of the worst sea in the world” due to its freezing conditions.
