Summary
The wreck of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance has been discovered 107 years after it sank off the coast of Antarctica.
The Endurance22 mission was able to locate the ship, which was discovered in the Weddell Sea at a depth of 3,008 metres.
The explorer Ernest Shackleton is inextricably associated to HMS Endurance, yet you may not know much about him.
Who is Ernest Shackleton?
Ernest Shackleton was born on February 15, 1875, in Kilkea, County Kildare, Ireland, according to Britannica.
In 1890, he joined the merchant marine service, and in 1901, he joined the Royal Naval Reserve as a sublieutenant.
Following that, he joined Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s British National Antarctic (Discovery) Expedition (1901–04) as a third lieutenant and took part in the sledge trek through the Ross Ice Shelf alongside Scott and Edward Wilson.
His health deteriorated during the expedition, and he was returned home in 1903. He didn’t join another Antarctic expedition until January 1908, which was five years later.
He led a sledging party to within 97 nautical miles (180 kilometres) of the South Pole as the expedition’s leader.
Shackleton led the British Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914–16) out of England in August 1914.
Shackleton intended to go across Antarctica from a base on the Weddell Sea to McMurdo Sound via the South Pole, but the expedition ship Endurance became stranded in ice off the Caird coast and drifted for ten months before being destroyed by pack ice.
The expedition members then spent another five months drifting on ice floes before escaping in boats to Elephant Island in the South Shetland Islands, where they survived on seal meat, penguins, and their dogs.
Shackleton was able to rescue his crew through four successive relief operations after sailing 800 miles to South Georgia. Amazingly, none of his crew died during the journey.
During World War I, Shackleton served in the British army. In 1921, he launched a fourth Antarctic journey aboard the Quest, dubbed the Shackleton-Rowett Antarctic Expedition, with the intention of circumnavigating the continent.
Unfortunately, Shackleton died at the start of the journey in 1922 at Grytviken, South Georgia.
His efforts to raise funding for his missions, as well as the great strain of the expeditions themselves, were thought to have worn him down.
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