After 106 years, Endurance shipwreck was found in Antarctica. Ship trapped in the snow and sunk while on an Antarctic expedition led by Ernest Shackleton.
The Legendary Expedition of Captain Ernest Shackleton
Endurance enjoys a dignified place in the history of polar exploration. Because it contains the most amazing story related to the process of escaping adversity to survive when exploring, which is the survival story of Shackleton and the people on the expedition.
Photograph of explorer Ernest Shackleton in 1914. Photo: Alamy
As a wooden ship 43.9m long and with a three-masted design, Endurance is designed to be sturdy, suitable for operating environments in icy waters. The hull is made entirely of oak, with a thickness of more than 75cm (2.5 feet).
The Endurance sailed from the port of Plymouth (England) in August 1914, shortly after Europe was sinking into World War I. The expedition is titled “The Imperial Trans-Antarctic” led by Shackleton and it is the first attempt in the world to explore the Antarctic continent by land.
The expedition was funded by the British government and private sponsors, with the direct support of then-Prime Minister of the Navy Winston Churchill. The main purpose of this project is to send a group of Explorer to the Antarctic coast. From here, explorers will disembark and walk across the Antarctic continent.
As Endurance entered the waters of the Weddell, the German and British navies were engaged in fierce engagement near the Falkland Islands, also in the southern Atlantic Ocean. But the enemy Shackleton and his crew faced was not war. The Weddell Sea, an area of nearly 2.6 million square kilometers, is the most remote sea in the world, with natural conditions, harsh environment, thick ice and snow, strong winds. Shackleton himself called it “the worst sea in the world”.
Shortly after leaving the British overseas territory of South Georgia in the South Atlantic in late 1914, the Endurance became stranded in ice and snow. After months of living in a makeshift tent set up on icebergs drifting north, Shackleton and 27 crew members boarded a lifeboat and headed for the uninhabited Elephant Island.
Image shows the Endurance ship stuck in the ice in the Arctic but has not yet sunk. Photo: Getty Images
Shackleton and his group of four then made a 1,280-kilometer sea crossing to the island of South Georgia. From here, Shackleton’s group dispatches ships to rescue the rest of the expedition. All crew members of the Endurance were successfully rescued in August 1916. This thrilling survival journey makes explorer Shackleton a hero in England.
Operation to search for the ship Endurance
Using an unmanned submersible, a team of explorers, marine geologists and technical experts have located the Endurance wreck in the Weddell Sea, east of the Antarctic peninsula. Overcoming the challenge of freezing seas and cold temperatures, the team spent two weeks surveying and searching the sea more than 388 square kilometers, where the Endurance is believed to have sunk in 1915.
The site of the Eudurance shipwreck is heavily guarded, designated a historic site and monument by the 1959 Antarctic Treaty. The search for the Endurance wreck is sponsored, directly by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Foundation. conduct is the Endurance expedition group22. The crew traveling aboard the SA Agulhas II, which left Cape Town earlier this year, used a scuba diving drone to locate the Endurance wreck.
Specialized equipment was mobilized in the Endurance team’s search for the Endurance wreck. Photo: Getty Images
“This is the most intact wooden wreck I have ever come across. The ship is in a forward position, protruding on the seabed, intact and in a wonderfully preserved state,” said Mensun Bound, the group’s exploration director. Endurance22, expressed her feelings when announcing the results of the expedition on March 9. He also hopes that the Endurance will exist as a monolithic, unbroken line.
After the shipwreck, Shackleton and Endurance captain Frank Worsley recorded the ship’s location. The Endurance22 expedition team extended the search beyond this data, to compensate for errors in the navigation equipment Worsley used. The sea water here is clear, with a visibility of at least 30m. The location of the shipwreck is about 6km south of the location as noted by Captain Worsley.
The expedition team said the wreck was located at a depth of more than 3,000 meters, in the world’s coldest sea. The fact that the wreck is intact is not too surprising. Because Weddsell is a cold sea, there is no existence of the wood-eating sea creatures that have damaged shipwrecks in other sea areas.
Antarctica has no natural wood, so there are no wood-eating creatures here. Scientists have left pieces of wood and whale bones on the seabed in previous experiments. As a result, the piece of wood appears to be intact while most of the whale bone has been dissolved.
The first images of the Endurance wreck were transmitted via unmanned scuba diving devices from a depth of nearly 3,000 meters on March 5. The camera pans across the wooden deck of shiprecords the ropes, tools, railings, masts and rudders – all in near-intact condition.
Ernest Shackleton died of a heart attack in South Georgia in March 1922, at the age of 47. Exactly 100 years later, the Endurance22 team captured the first true images of the legendary ship Endurance, deciphering an incident. The event is said to be the most mysterious event in the history of maritime exploration.
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