The wreck of the legendary ship “Endurance” was found in Antarctica, 106 years after it crashed into ice and sank during the mission of the English explorer Ernest Sackleton.
A team of marine archaeologists and technicians located the wreck at the bottom of the Weddell Sea, east of the Antarctic Peninsula, using submarine drones.
Struggling with sea ice and icy temperatures, the team spent more than two weeks searching an area of 150 square miles around where the ship sank in 1915.
The Endurance, a wooden ship almost 45 meters long, with three masts, holds a respectable place in the history of the Poles’ explorations, because it gave birth to one of the greatest survival stories in the history of exploration.
Its location, at a depth of almost three kilometers in water that is one of the coldest on Earth, ranked it among the most famous shipwrecks not found.
That was until now, when the discovery of the wreck was announced on Wednesday in an announcement by the search mission, Endurance22.
“We made history with the discovery of Endurance and successfully completed the most difficult shipwreck investigation in the world”, said John Sears, head of the mission.
The first images of the ship after those taken by Sackleton photographer Frank Herley revealed parts of the ship in astonishing detail. An image of the stern showed the name “ENDURANCE” above a five-pointed star, a remnant of the time before Sackleton bought the ship, when it was called “Polaris”. Another image showed the rear deck and the wheel of the ship.
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A perfectly preserved shipwreck on the ice
Mensun Bound, the mission’s director of exploration and an archaeologist who has discovered many shipwrecks, said the Endurance was the most beautiful he had ever seen. “It is upright, free from the bottom and in excellent condition,” he said.
The relatively untouched image of the Endurance was not unexpected, given the cold water and lack of wood-eating marine organisms in the Weddell Sea that have destroyed shipwrecks elsewhere. Although images of the ship before the sinking had shown extensive damage and the collapse of the ship’s mast, Bound expected most of the ship to be intact.
The video of the mission showed a broken masts and damage to the decks.
The 10 million dollars “treasure hunt”
The wreck hunt, which cost more than $ 10 million donated by someone who wished to remain anonymous, was carried out by a South African icebreaker that left Cape Town in early February. With the exception of a few technical glitches involving the two submarines, the investigation proceeded relatively smoothly.
Battery-powered submarines combed the seabed twice a day, for about six hours at a time. They used sonar to scan part of the smooth bottom, looking for anything that rose above it. Once the wreck was located several days ago, the equipment was exchanged for high-resolution cameras and other instruments for detailed images and scans.
