Explained | The last voyage of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ‘Endurance’

The crew was rescued two years after their ship sank, but all members managed to survive.

The story so far: A team searching for the wreckage of polar explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship “Endurance” has successfully located it in the Weddell Sea. The ship was lost in November 1915 when Sir Shackleton attempted to make the first land crossing of Antarctica.

The Endurance22 Mission that located the ship was organised by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust. The team used advanced underwater vehicles called Sabertooths and fitted them with high-definition cameras and scanners to track the vessel’s remains.

Sir Shackleton was an Anglo-Irish explorer who started his career at sea with the merchant navy and later qualified as a master mariner. In 1901, he was chosen to go on his first polar expedition led by British naval officer Robert Falcon Scott on the ship “Discovery” but had to return due to bad health. Sir Shackleton, however, got closer to the South Pole than anyone had ever been at the time.

In 1907, he returned to the Antarctic on the ship “Nimrod”. His team set a record by coming even closer to the South Pole than before. He was knighted on his return to Britain.

Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen became the first person to reach the South Pole in 1911. Following this achievement, Sir Shackleton made his third trip to the Antarctic, this time onboard “Endurance”, in 1914. The ship sank in 1915 but the explorer and his crew managed to survive.

Sir Shackleton had started his voyage towards Antarctica in 1914, shortly after World War I had broken out. He chose to sidestep the Falkland Islands route to avoid a potential conflict with the Imperial German Navy and took a route close to South Georgia instead.

The aim of the “Endurance” expedition was to achieve the first crossing of the Antarctic from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea via the South Pole.