The wreck has been found in an area described by Shackleton itself as “the worst portion of the world’s worst sea”, because of its glacial conditions.
Le Monde with AFP
It’s a mythical wreck. That of endurance, the ship of British Explorer Ernest Shackleton, broken by ice in 1915 off Antarctica. It was found in the Weddell Sea by 3,000 meters back, announced its discoverers, Wednesday, March 9.
“We are very moved to have localized and captured images of endurance,” said Mensun Bound, director of exploration shipping organized by the Falkland Maritime Heritage Trust. “It’s by far the most beautiful wreck of wood I’ve ever seen. She stands straight, very proud on the seabed, intact, in a fantastic state of preservation,” added the explorer. “We can even read his name, endurance, inscribed in a circle arc on the stern,” he said.
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The wreck was found about six kilometers from the shipwreck site, clarified his discoverers. The research expedition – with a hundred people – who had left the CAP on 5 February aboard a South African icebreaker, hoped to find the wreck before the end of the Summer Austral.
Endurance had left the British Island of South Georgia, in the South Atlantic, at the end of 1914 to take the Imperial Trans-Antarctic expedition, led by Ernest Shackleton, which aimed at the first crossing. From the Antarctic continent, of the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea, via the South Pole.
Crew Rescue
But in January 1915 the ship is taken by the ice of the Weddell Sea, near the Larsen Ice Barrier. Imprisoned for months, the three-meter 34 meters slick meal is slowly broken by the ice, it flows on November 21, 1915, by 3,000 m deep.
The expedition has become legendary due to the conditions of survival of the crew, which camped for months on the pack ice, before it rompe, then joined in canoe the inhospitable and Ice Ice Island. ‘Elephant, facing the Antarctic Peninsula, on which it has found refuge.
Legendary also because of the bold journey of Shackleton: Party aboard a boat of endurance with some companions to look for help to South Georgia, he will return to save all his crew.
The Endurance22 shipping has used advanced technologies, including two submarine drones, to explore the area described by Shackleton itself as “the worst portion of the world’s worst sea” because of its glacial conditions.