The wreck of the Endurance, the ship of British explorer Ernest Shackleton wrecked by ice in 1915 off the coast of Antarctica, has been discovered in the Wedell Sea at a depth of 3,000 meters, officials said on Wednesday, March 9.
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“We are very moved to find and capture the Endurance,” said Mansun Bound, director of the research expedition organized by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust. “This is by far the most beautiful wooden wreck I have ever seen. It stands upright, stands very proudly on the seabed, intact, in a fantastic state of preservation,” the researcher added. “You can even read its name Endurance, drawn in an arc on the stern,” he rejoiced.
Imperial Transantarctic Expedition
According to the discoverers, the wreckage was found about six kilometers from the site of the flood. A search party of about 100 left Cape Town on February 5 aboard a South African icebreaker, hoping to find the wreck before the end of the austral summer. The Endurance left the British island of South Georgia in the South Atlantic in late 1914 to embark on the Imperial Transantarctic Expedition led by Shackleton to make the first crossing of the Antarctic continent from the Weddell Sea to the Weddell Sea. Roos, across the South Pole. But in January 1915, the ship was stuck in the ice of the Weddell Sea, not far from the Larsen Ice Shelf. Sharpened for months, the 44-meter three-masted schooner slowly broke on the ice and sank in November 1915 at a depth of 3000 m.
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The expedition became legendary for the survival conditions of the crew, who camped for months on the pack ice before it melted, then reunited by canoe and found refuge on the inhospitable and icy island of Elephant, overlooking the Antarctic Peninsula. But also because of Shackleton’s daring journey in the Endurance canoe with a few comrades in search of help to South Georgia, who will return to rescue his entire crew. The Endurance22 expedition used state-of-the-art technology, including two underwater drones, to explore an area that Shackleton himself called “the worst part of the worst sea in the world” due to its ice conditions.
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