The wreck of the ship Endurance, whose sinking launched one of the most astounding tales of survival in expeditionary history, has been found, after 107 years, in remarkable condition in 10,000 feet of ice-covered water in Weddell Sound in Antarctica. 

 Endurance was the ship of Sir Ernest Shackleton on his Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914 – 1917). After the Norwegian Amundsen beat Scott’s British expedition in reaching the South Pole, Shackleton had decided to become the first to cross the continent of Antarctica. But Endurance became trapped in the sea ice during the winter of 1915. The twenty-eight men on the expedition team spent several months living on board the ship, but after the encroaching ice crushed its stern, Shackleton gave the orders to abandon it. 

Shackleton’s journal entry that days reads: “We have been compelled to abandon the ship, which is crushed beyond all hope of ever being righted, we are alive and well, and we have stores and equipment for the task that lies before us. The task is to reach land with all the members of the Expedition. It is hard to write what I feel.”

The 28 members of the expedition were isolated on the drifting pack ice hundreds of miles from land, with no ship, no means of communication with the outside world, and limited supplies. After salvaging three lifeboats from Endurance, the men camped on the drifting ice pack for two months before managing a harrowing, five-day sea voyage to reach land on Elephant Island. They were off the ice, but they were on an uninhabited island far off the shipping routes. The nearest human outpost was a whaling station on South Georgia Island, 720 nautical miles away. Shackleton and his men fortified the strongest lifeboat, only 20 feet long, and he and five others struck out for South Georgia. For fifteen days, during which they were only able to make four navigational readings, they battled storms, the ice, a hurricane, and the constant threat of capsizing before finally reaching South Georgia. But the small group had made land on the other side of the island from the whaling station. With only boots with screws pushed into the soles, a carpenter’s adze, and fifty feet of rope, Shackleton and his men hiked nonstop for 32 miles over a perilous mountain range covered by snow and ice. When the unrecognizable men walked into the whaling station, a startled Norwegian asked who they were. “I am Ernest Shackleton,” came the reply, and the Norwegian burst into tears.

The problem of rescuing his men back on Elephant Island was almost as challenging. Shackleton’s first three attempts failed due to ice. Finally, he convinced the Chilean government to lend him a tug, and the rescue party reached Elephant Island on the 30th of August. The men had been stranded there for four months. Every one of them survived. 

Shackleton wrote his own version of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition in his book “South,” and Alfred Lansing’s “Endurance” is a recent account, complete with remarkabl photos and stills from motion pictures taken during the expedition and rescued along with the survivors.  

A short film of the expedition, featuring the unforgettable motion pictures taken by the expedition, is on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ-6RJkuLlQ

Check here for more on the final piece of Shackleton’s journey—the successful effort to find the wreck of the Endurance: https://endurance22.org/