Shackleton’s lost ship is FOUND: Endurance is discovered at the bottom of Antarctica’s Weddell Sea, 107 years after it sank – and it’s still in remarkable condition

• Endurance has been found 107 years after it became trapped in sea ice and sank off the coast of Antarctica
• Sir Ernest Shackleton’s wooden ship had not been seen since it sank in Weddell Sea, Southern Ocean in 1915
• The Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust said Endurance was discovered at a depth of 9,868 feet (3,008 metres)
• Shackleton planned the first land crossing of Antarctica from Weddell Sea via the South Pole to the Ross Sea 
• Remarkable footage of the wreck shows it has been astonishingly preserved, with the ship’s wheel still intact
• The Antarctic circumpolar current has acted as barrier to the larvae that could have degraded the ship’s wood

The wreck of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance has been found 107 years after it became trapped in sea ice and sank off the coast of Antarctica.

Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust said the wooden ship, which had not been seen since it went down in the Weddell Sea in 1915, was found at a depth of 9,868 feet (3,008 metres).

Remarkable footage of the wreck shows it has been astonishingly preserved, with the ship’s wheel still intact and the name ‘Endurance’ still perfectly visible on the ship’s stern.

The Endurance22 Expedition had set off from Cape Town, South Africa in February this year, a month after the 100th anniversary of Sir Ernest’s death on a mission to locate it.

Endurance was found approximately four miles south of the position originally recorded by the ship’s captain Frank Worsley, but within the search area defined by the expedition team before its departure from Cape Town.

Back in 1915, Sir Ernest Shackleton and his crew set out to achieve the first land crossing of Antarctica, but Endurance did not reach land and became trapped in dense pack ice, forcing the 28 men on board to eventually abandon ship.

For the mission, the expedition team worked from the South African polar research and logistics vessel, S.A. Agulhas II, assisted by non-intrusive underwater search robots.

The wreck is protected as a Historic Site and Monument under the Antarctic Treaty, ensuring that whilst the wreck is being surveyed and filmed it will not be touched or disturbed in any way, according to the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust.

The expedition’s director of exploration said footage of Endurance showed it to be intact and ‘by far the finest wooden shipwreck’ he has seen.

‘We are overwhelmed by our good fortune in having located and captured images of Endurance,’ said Mensun Bound, maritime archaeologist and director of the exploration.

‘It is upright, well proud of the seabed, intact, and in a brilliant state of preservation. You can even see Endurance arced across the stern, directly below the taffrail.

‘This is a milestone in polar history.’

Bound also paid tribute to the navigational skills of Captain Frank Worsley, the Captain of the Endurance, whose detailed records were ‘invaluable’ in the quest to locate the wreck.

Dr John Shears, the expedition leader, said his team, which was accompanied by historian Dan Snow, had made ‘polar history’ by completing what he called ‘the world’s most challenging shipwreck search’.

‘In addition, we have undertaken important scientific research in a part of the world that directly affects the global climate and environment,’ Dr Shears said.

Dr Adrian Glover, a deep-sea biologist at the Natural History Museum, not involved with the expedition, led a 2013 research paper predicting very good wood preservation for Endurance, based on experimental work.

The Antarctic circumpolar current — an ocean current that flows clockwise from west to east around Antarctica — has essentially acted as barrier to the larvae of deep-water species that could have eaten away at the ship’s wood.

Dr Glover told MailOnline: ‘The preservation of Endurance is quite remarkable, but not totally unexpected.

‘Tiny “shipworms” — small bivalve molluscs — that normally eat wood in well oxygenated oceans are absent from Antarctica, just as they are absent from the Baltic and Black Seas, other remarkable wooden shipwreck “vaults”.

‘So the findings from the new discovery are important not just from a historical perspective but also in terms of understanding the ecology and evolution of life in Antarctica. It’s a great day for Antarctic archaeology and science.’

The expedition team has also been filming for a long-form observational documentary chronicling the expedition which has been commissioned by National Geographic to air later this year on Disney+.

Endurance was one of two ships used by the Imperial Trans-Antarctic expedition of 1914-1917, which hoped to make the first land crossing of the Antarctic.

Just as the First World War was breaking out in August 1914, the Endurance’s crew set out from London with the lofty ambition of becoming the first to cross the Antarctic continent.

Carrying an expedition crew of 28 men, 69 dogs and one cat, the 144-foot-long Endurance was a three-masted schooner barque sturdily built for operations in polar waters.

Aiming to land at Antarctica’s Vahsel Bay, the vessel instead became stuck in pack ice on the Weddell Sea on January 18, 1915 — where she and her crew would remain for many months.

In late October, however, a drop in temperature from 42°F to -14°F saw the ice pack begin to steadily crush the Endurance.

Sadly, Shackleton decided that the mission sled dogs and the tomcat,  called Mrs Chippy, that were also on board would not survive the rest of their journey, and had them shot on October 29.

Endurance never reached land and became trapped in the dense pack ice and the 28 men on board eventually had no choice but to abandon ship.

Endurance finally sank on November 21, 1915.

After months spent in makeshift camps on the ice floes drifting northwards, the party took to the lifeboats to reach the inhospitable, uninhabited, Elephant Island. The men had allegedly had to resort to eating bodies of some of the youngest dogs that had been on board.

Most of the men remained at Elephant Island while Shackleton and five others then made an extraordinary 800-mile (1,300 km) open-boat journey in the lifeboat, James Caird, to reach South Georgia, an island in the southern Atlantic Ocean.

Shackleton and two others then crossed the mountainous island to the whaling station at Stromness.

On board the steam tug Yelcho — on loan to him from the Chilean Navy — Shackleton was able to return to rescue the rest of his crew on August 30, 1916.

MRS CHIPPY, ENDURANCE’S CAT

When Endurance sailed for the Antarctic, she carried not only Shackleton and his crew of 27 — but also a cat dubbed ‘Mrs Chippy’.

The tiger-striped tab by was, despite its name, actually a male — the moniker came from his habit of dotingly following ship’s carpenter Harry ‘Chippy’ McNish everywhere he went.

‘Full of character’, Mrs Chippy was described by the expedition as being able to climb the rigging exactly in ‘the manner of a seaman going aloft’.

Despite this, poor Mrs Chippy accidentally jumped out of one of Endurance’s portholes on September 12, 1914 — but was rescued when watch officer Hubert Hudson heard his cries and turned the ship around to rescue the cat from the water.

Sadly, after the Endurance was crushed by the ice, Shackleton decided that Mrs Chippy — and five of the missions sled dogs — would not survive the rest of their journey, and had them shot on October 29.

Mr McNish never forgave Shackleton for having his beloved cat killed.

Shortly following the Endurance22 expedition setting off in February, SA Agulhas II became stuck in ice at the same spot where Endurance sank over a century ago.

The SA Agulhas II became stuck after the mercury dipped to -18°F (-10°C).

Dan Snow told The Times: ‘Clever people did say to me on the way, “How do you know you’re not going to get iced in like Shackleton?”

‘I said, “Don’t worry about that. We’ve got all the technology.” But we are now iced in.’

Fortunately, thanks to technological advances such as mechanical cranes, engine power and a case of aviation fuel, crew members managed to free the vessel.

Sir Ernest Shackleton: Famed Anglo-Irish Antarctic adventurer

Sir Ernest Shackleton during the 1908 expedition to Antarctica

Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton  was an Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who led three expeditions to the frozen continent.

He was at the heart of a period in history that later came to be known as the ‘Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration’.

Born in Ireland, Shackleton moved to London with his family when he was 10 and first experienced polar climates as an officer on Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s Discovery expedition of 1901–1904.

He was sent home early from that expedition after work experiencing poor health that had been ascribed to scurvy. New studies suggest he had beriberi.

During the Nimrod expedition of 1907–1909, Shackleton and his companions created a new recorded of farthest south latitude at 88 degrees south.

Disaster struck his next expedition, the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, 1914–1917, when the ship, the Endurance, became trapped in pack ice.

The crew were able to escape by launching lifeboats and reaching nearby islands, travelling through stormy oceans for 830 miles.

He returned to the Antarctic for one final time in 1921 with the Shackleton–Rowett Expedition, but died of a heart attack on January 5, 1922, while his ship was moored in South Georgia.

While Shackleton is best known for his exploration, his legacy is also one of enabling a considerable amount of scientific research.

 His expeditions helped produce comprehensive scientific and geographical surveys — among which were the first surveys of Antarctica’s interior and the effective location of the Magnetic South Pole.

‘Shackleton is an iconic figure of Antarctic history with the most incredible legacy of courage and endeavour,’ noted the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust’s CEO, Camilla Nichol.

‘But we sometimes overlook the contribution his expeditions made to science.

‘To this day Antarctica is an essential barometer for climate change at the heart of climate science.

‘We preserve Shackleton’s legacy to inspire the next generation of pioneering scientists and explorers.’