Endurance

DATE OF LAUNCH: December 17, 1912

DATE AND LOCATION OF LOSS: November 21, 1915, Weddell Sea, off the Antarctic coast.

DATE LOCATED: March 9, 2022

SHIP DETAILS: Designed by Ole Aanderud Larsen, Endurance was built at the Framnæs shipyard in Sandefjord, Norway, and fully completed on December 17, 1912. She was built under the supervision of master wood shipbuilder Christian Jacobsen, who was renowned for insisting that all men in his employment were not just skilled shipwrights but also be experienced in seafaring aboard whaling or sealing ships. Every detail of her construction had been scrupulously planned to ensure maximum durability: for example, every joint and fitting was cross-braced for maximum strength.

The ship was initially christened Polaris after the North Star. She was 144 feet long, with a 25 feet beam, and measured 348 tons gross. Her original purpose was to provide luxurious accommodation for small tourist and hunting parties in the Arctic as an ice-capable steam yacht. As launched she had 10 passenger cabins, a spacious dining saloon and galley (with accommodation for two cooks), a smoking room, a darkroom to allow passengers to develop photographs, electric lighting and even a small bathroom.

By the spring of 1914, the ship was sold to Ernest Shackleton, who renamed the ship Endurance and had her refitted and modified for expedition purposes. She was stripped of most of her luxurious accommodation and fittings. This included removing many of the passenger cabins to make room for space for stores and equipment, while the crew cabins on the lower deck were removed and converted into a cargo hold—the reduced crew of sailors that Shackleton would take on the expedition would make their quarters in the cramped forecastle. The darkroom remained in its original location ahead of the boiler. The refit also saw the ship repainted from her original white color to a more austere black, which was more visible amongst the ice, and features such as gilt scrollwork on the bow and stern were painted over. Despite her change of name, she retained a large badge in the shape of a five-pointed star on her stern, which originally symbolized her name after the pole star.

Though her hull looked from the outside like that of any other vessel of a comparable size, it was not. She was designed for polar conditions with a very sturdy construction. Her keel members were four pieces of solid oak, one above the other, adding up to a thickness of 85 inches, while its sides were between 30 inches and 18 inches thick, with twice as many frames as normal and the frames being of double thickness. She was built of planks of oak and Norwegian fir up to 30 inches thick, sheathed in greenheart, an exceptionally strong and heavy wood. The bow, which would meet the ice head-on, had been given special attention. Each timber had been made from a single oak tree chosen for its shape so that its natural shape followed the curve of the ship’s design. When put together, these pieces had a thickness of 52 inches.

Of her three masts, the forward one was square-rigged, while the after two carried fore and aft sails, like a schooner. As well as sails, Endurance had a 350 horsepower coal-fired steam engine capable of speeds up to 10.2 knots.

CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE LOSS: On October 26, 1914, Endurance sailed from Buenos Aires to what would be her last port of call, the whaling station at Grytviken on the island of South Georgia, where she arrived on November 5. She left Grytviken on December 5, 1914, heading for the southern regions of the Weddell Sea.

Two days after leaving South Georgia, Endurance encountered polar pack ice and progress slowed to a crawl. For weeks Endurance worked its way through the pack, averaging less than 30 miles per day. By January 15, 1915, Endurance was within 200 miles of her destination, Vahsel Bay. By the following morning, heavy pack ice was sighted and in the afternoon a gale developed. Under these conditions it was soon evident progress could not be made, and Endurance took shelter under the lee of a large grounded iceberg. During the next two days, Endurance moved back and forth under the sheltering protection of the berg.

On January 18, the gale began to moderate and Endurance set the topsail with the engine at slow. The pack had blown away. Progress was made slowly until hours later Endurance encountered the pack once more. It was decided to move forward and work through the pack, and at 5:00 pm Endurance entered it. This ice was different from what had been encountered before, and the ship was soon amongst thick but soft brash ice, and became beset. The gale increased in intensity and kept blowing for another six days from a northerly direction towards land. By January 24, the wind had completely compressed the ice in the Weddell Sea against the land, leaving Endurance icebound as far as the eye could see in every direction

By October, temperatures of nearly 42 °F were recorded and the ice showed further signs of opening up. The floe which had been jammed against the ship’s starboard side since July broke up on October 14, casting the Endurance afloat in a pool of open water for the first time in nine months.

On October 16, Shackleton ordered steam to be raised so the ship could take advantage of any openings in the ice. It took nearly four hours for the boilers to be filled with fresh water melted from ice, and then a leak was discovered in one of the fittings and they had to be pumped out, repaired and then refilled. The following day a lead of open water was seen ahead of the ship. Only one boiler had been lit and there was insufficient steam to use the engine, so all the sails were set to try to force the ship into the loosening pack ice but without success.

In the late afternoon of October 18, the ice closed in around the Endurance once again.

In the afternoon of October 25, the pressure of the ice increased further. The main deck of the Endurance buckled upwards amidships and the beams sheared. As the ice moved against her stern, the aft part of the ship was lifted up and the damaged sternpost and the rudder were torn away. This angle caused all the water in the ship to run forward, collecting in the bow where it then began to freeze. The action of the ice in the stern and the excessive weight in the bow caused the ship to sink into the ice bow-first. Under its own pressure, the ice then broke over the forecastle and piled up onto the deck in the forward part of the ship, further weighing this end of the ship down. Through all of this, the pumping operations had continued, but by the end of the day Shackleton ordered this to stop and for the men to take to the ice.

During the course of the next day, parties were sent back to the ship to recover more supplies and stores. They found that the entire port side of the Endurance had been driven inwards and compressed, and the ice had entirely filled the bow and stern sections. The ship’s Blue Ensign was hoisted up her mizzen mast so that she would, in Shackleton’s words, “go down with colours flying.”

On November 13, a new pressure wave swept through the pack ice. The forward topgallant mast and topmasts collapsed as the bow was finally crushed. These moments were recorded on film by expedition photographer Frank Hurley. The mainmast was split near its base and shortly afterwards the mainmast and the mizzen mast broke and collapsed together, with this also filmed by Hurley. The ensign was re-rigged on the tip of one of the foremast yardarms which, constrained by the rigging, was now hanging vertically from the remains of the foremast and was the highest point of the wreck.

In the late afternoon of November 21, movement of the remaining wreckage was noticed as another pressure wave hit. Within the space of a minute, the stern of the Endurance was lifted clear of the ice as the floes moved together and then, as the pressure passed and they moved apart, the entire wreck fell into the ocean. By daylight the following day, the ice surrounding the spot where the Endurance had sunk had moved together again, obliterating any trace of the wreck.

DISCOVERY AND FINDINGS: In 1998, wreckage found at Stinker Point on the southwestern side of Elephant Island was incorrectly identified as flotsam from the ship. In fact, it was from the 1877 wreck of the Connecticut sealing ship Charles Shearer. In 2001, wreck hunter David Mearns unsuccessfully planned an expedition to find the wreck of Endurance. By 2003, two rival groups were making plans for an expedition to find the wreck, but no expedition was actually mounted.

In 2010, Mearns announced a new plan to search for the wreck. The plan was sponsored by the National Geographic Society but was subject to finding sponsorship for the balance of the $10 million estimated cost. A 2013 study by Adrian Glover of the Natural History Museum, London suggests the Antarctic Circumpolar Current could preserve the wreck on the seabed by keeping wood-boring “ship worms” away. A Weddell Sea Expedition to locate and possibly photograph the wreck using long-range Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) was underway in the Antarctic summer of 2018–2019. This expedition failed when the researchers’ AUV was lost to the ice as well.

In July 2021, Endurance22 announced a new expedition to locate the wreck of Endurance would launch in early 2022, using Saab submersible technology. Endurance22 also announced that If found, the wreck would not be disturbed but instead scanned in 3D.

On 9 March 2022, it was announced that Endurance22 had successfully found the wreck of Endurance in the Weddell Sea at 9,869 feet deep, 4 miles south of its last known position. In a statement, Mensun Bound, director of exploration on the expedition, paid tribute to Captain Frank Worsley’s navigational skills: His “detailed records were invaluable in our quest to locate the wreck,” Bound said. The discoverers on board the research vessel S. A. Agulhas II report that the wreck is in remarkably good condition, and they have filmed and photographed it extensively, including ultra-high-definition 3D scanning. In line with the team’s promise, they did not salvage any part of the wreck or its contents, as the ship is now a protected historic site and monument under the Antarctic Treaty System.

INTERESTING FACTS: At the time of her launch in 1912, Endurance was perhaps the strongest wooden ship ever built, with the possible exception of Fram, the vessel used by Fridtjof Nansen and later by Roald Amundsen. There was one major difference between the ships. Fram was bowl-bottomed, which meant that if the ice closed in against her, the ship would be squeezed up and out and not be subject to the pressure of the ice compressing around her. Endurance, on the other hand, was designed with great inherent strength in her hull in order to resist collision with ice floes and to break through pack ice by ramming and crushing; she was therefore not intended to be frozen into heavy pack ice, and so was not designed to rise out of a crush. In such a situation she was dependent on the ultimate strength of her hull alone.