Shackleton’s Endurance Is Found on the Floor of the Weddell Sea

On 5 March 2022, underwater searchers in the Weddell Sea located the sunken wreck of Endurance, the three-masted barquentine lost by polar explorer Ernest Shackleton during his 1914 to 1917 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Lying at a depth of 3,008 metres, the vessel was discovered standing upright on the seabed nearly 107 years after it succumbed to shifting floes. Despite the immense crushing forces that led to its sinking, cameras on underwater submersibles revealed the wooden hull to be in an exceptional state of preservation, with the ship's name still clearly visible across the stern beneath the polar waters.

Originally christened Polaris, the vessel was designed by Ole Aanderud Larsen and constructed at the Framnæs shipyard in Sandefjord, Norway, under the supervision of master builder Christian Jacobsen. Launched in December 1912, it had been conceived as a luxury steam yacht for Arctic tourist excursions and hunting parties. Jacobsen required that his shipwrights possess practical maritime experience on whaling or sealing vessels. The hull featured double frames, an oak keel reinforced to a thickness of 85 inches, bow timbers assembled to 52 inches, and external sheathing of heavy greenheart wood. While extraordinarily robust, the hull profile differed from that of Fram, the famous ship used by Fridtjof Nansen and later by Roald Amundsen, which had a rounded bottom designed to rise out of compressing ice rather than endure the direct brunt of heavy floes.