Endurance was the three-masted barquentine in which Sir Ernest Shackleton and a crew of 27 men sailed for the Antarctic on the 1914–1917 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. The ship, originally named Polaris, was built at Framnæs shipyard and launched in 1912 from Sandefjord in Norway. When one of her commissioners, the Belgian Adrien de Gerlache, went bankrupt, the remaining one sold the ship for less than the shipyard had charged – but as Lars Christensen was the owner of Polaris, as well as of the yard, there was no hardship involved. The ship was bought by Shackleton in January 1914 for the expedition, which would be her first voyage. A year later, she became trapped in pack ice and finally sank in the Weddell Sea off Antarctica on 21 November 1915. All of the crew survived her sinking and were eventually rescued in 1916 after using the ship's boats to travel to Elephant Island and Shackleton, the ship's captain Frank Worsley, and four others made a voyage to seek help.
The wreck of Endurance was discovered on 5 March 2022, nearly 107 years after she sank, by the search team Endurance22. She lies deep, and is in "a brilliant state of preservation". The wreck is designated as a protected historic site and monument under the Antarctic Treaty System.
Design and construction
Designed by Ole Aanderud Larsen, Endurance was built at the Framnæs shipyard in Sandefjord, Norway. 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 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 launched on 17 December 1912 and was initially christened Polaris after the North Star. She was long, with a beam, and measured 350 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.
Her new equipment included three ship's boats. Two were transom-built rowing cutters purchased secondhand from the whaling industry. The third was a double-ended rowing whaleboat built for the expedition to specifications drawn up by Frank Worsley, Endurances new captain. After her refit, Endurance began the short coastal journey to Plymouth on 1 August 1914, the day that Germany declared war on Russia.
To find crew for the Endurance, Shackleton reportedly placed an advertisement in The Times, reading:
Voyages to the Antarctic Circle in the 16 years prior to Endurances purchase had been almost uniformly successful with only one vessel, the 30-year-old whaler Antarctic, having been crushed in the ice. With it being felt that little harm could come to a purpose-built ship in a sea in which ice halted all waves, Endurance became the first ship to be insured for her journey. All previous examples had their insurance end at the last port of call before their journey into the ice. Lloyd's of London and the Indemnity Marine Insurance Company underwrote Endurance at the value of £15,000.
Voyage
Embarking on her maiden voyage, Endurance sailed from Plymouth on 8 August 1914 and set course for Buenos Aires, Argentina, under Worsley's command. Shackleton remained in Britain, finalising the expedition's organization and attending to some last-minute fundraising. This was Endurances first major voyage following her completion and amounted to a shakedown voyage. Built for the ice, her hull was considered by many of her crew too rounded for the open ocean.
Shackleton took a steamer to Buenos Aires and caught up with his expedition a few days after Endurances arrival.
On 26 October 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 5 November. She left Grytviken on 5 December 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 her way through the pack, averaging less than per day. By 15 January 1915, Endurance was within of her destination, Vahsel Bay. 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; only one of the six cabins had not been pierced by the floes. Shackleton wrote that the entire aft of the ship "had been crushed concertina fashion", the forward motor engine was pushed into the galley, and gasoline cans stacked on deck were pushed through the deckhouse wall halfway into the wardroom. The ship's Blue Ensign was hoisted up her mizzen mast so that she would, in Shackleton's word's, "go down with colours flying".
After a failed attempt to man-haul the boats and stores overland on sledges, Shackleton realised the effort was much too intense and that the party would have to camp on the ice until it carried them to the north and broke up. More parties were sent back to the Endurance, still with her masts and rigging intact and all but her bow above the ice, to salvage any remaining items. By then, two days after abandoning her, the ship was submerged up to the forecastle. A large portion of the provisions had been left on the submerged lower deck. The only way to retrieve them was to cut through the main deck, which was more than a foot thick in places and itself under three feet of water. Some crates and boxes floated up once a hole had been cut, while others were retrieved with a grapple. In total, nearly 3.5 tons of stores were recovered from the wrecked ship.
The party was still camped under from the remains of the Endurance on 8 November when Shackleton returned to the ship to consider further salvage. By now the ship had sunk a further into the ice and the upper deck was now almost level with the ice. The interior of the ship was almost full of compacted ice and snow, making further work impossible.
On 13 November, 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 21 November, 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. The ice surrounding the spot where the Endurance had sunk immediately moved together again, obliterating any trace of the wreck. Worsley recorded the position as 68°39′30″ S, 52°26′30″ W but had been unable to obtain a sextant sight at the time and based the position on that of Ocean Camp at noon the following day.
Aftermath
The crew remained camped on the ice in the hopes that the floe would bring them closer to one of various islands. In April 1916, they set off in the Endurances three ship's boats and eventually landed on Elephant Island. Because the island was remote and rarely visited, Shackleton decided that help needed to be sought. On 24 April, he, Worsley, and four others began a voyage in a ship's boat, named James Caird, for South Georgia. After reaching South Georgia, Shackleton worked on arranging a rescue mission for those left on Elephant Island. Shackleton and Worsley made three voyages in different vessels that were unable to get through the ice to reach them.
The fourth attempt was made in the ill-suited Yelcho (lent by the Chilean government) and was successful. Despite the uncertainty of travel conditions (such as the vessel having no radio or double hull), all of the twenty-two members of the crew who had remained on Elephant Island were safely rescued on 30 August 1916 – 128 days after Shackleton had left in James Caird.
The actual retrieval of the men from the beach was done as quickly as possible, before the ice closed in again. But, even in that haste, care was taken to collect all the records and photographs of the expedition, as these gave the only hope of Shackleton paying the expenses of the failed expedition. Meanwhile, Yelcho's commander Luis Pardo was quickly regarded as a national hero in Chile, with the British government granting him a large monetary award, which he turned down.
Wreck
thumb|upright=1.65|Photograph of Endurance as found by Endurance22
In 1998, wreckage found at Stinker Point on the southwestern side of Elephant Island was incorrectly identified as flotsam from the ship. It instead 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 mounted at the time.
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 US$10 million estimated cost. A 2013 study by Adrian Glover of the Natural History Museum, London correctly suggested 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 (AUVs) was underway in the Antarctic summer of 2018–2019. This expedition failed when the researchers' AUV was lost to the ice.
Having examined Frank Worsley's original log books housed at the Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, New Zealand, and closely studied his navigational methods, Lars Bergman and Robin Stuart published an analysis of the wreck's likely position relative to the position given in the log.
Experts speculated that the wreck rested on flat terrain at around , undisturbed by massive sediment deposition and little to no erosion.
In July 2021, the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust announced Endurance22, a new expedition to search for the wreck of Endurance that would launch in early 2022 using Saab submersible technology. If found, the wreck would not be disturbed, but instead scanned in 3D.
On 7 February 2022 Lars Bergman, David Mearns and Robin Stuart released a preprint of their paper on the navigation of Endurance, which had been previously submitted to the Journal of Navigation in July 2021. The paper was based upon a re-analysis of the original lunar occultation timings made by Frank Worsley and Reginald W. James, the expedition physicist, using modern lunar ephemerides and catalogues of star positions, which allowed the authors to refine the predicted sinking position of Endurance. According to the authors their latest paper is "a more complete, accurate and reliable basis for determining the most probable sinking location of Endurance". David Mearns delivered the 2022 EGR Taylor Lecture on their analysis and the final paper appeared online on 21 February 2023. Bergman, Mearns and Stuart were awarded a special Certificate of Achievement by the Royal Institute of Navigation "in recognition of their pioneering data analysis and modelling leading to the successful location of Endurances wreck".
Discovery
The wreck of Endurance was discovered on 5 March 2022.
Endurance22 announced, in a 9 March 2022 press release, that they had found the wreck in the Weddell Sea at a depth of . Although the wreck's position was initially described as being about south of Worsley's original calculated location, the true position was later revealed to be 68°44′21″ S, 52°19′47″ W which is South, East ( total distance) of the position given in the log. Mensun Bound, the expedition's director of exploration, said that Worsley's navigational skills had helped the expedition find the wreck; his historic "detailed records were invaluable". Additionally, sea ice, which covers the Weddell Sea year-round and has historically been so thick as to make underwater exploration nearly impossible, was recorded as being at its lowest levels around Antarctica since space satellite records began being kept in the 1970s.
The discoverers on board the South African research vessel S. A. Agulhas II said that the wreck was in remarkably good condition, and that they had filmed and photographed it extensively, including with ultra-high-definition 3D scanning. The name Endurance on the stern remains clearly legible. A legal protection perimeter around the wreck is being widened from 500m to 1,500m.
The search for the Endurance and its discovery were able to be followed by students around the world, thanks to the efforts of the expedition's educational partner, Reach the World. Reach the World conducted live streams, created educational resources, and published informational updates at regular intervals before, during, and after the expedition.
The 2025 Goodwood Future Lab event included a 3D-printed exhibit of Endurance as part of the Seabed 2030 project.
Crew
The crew of Endurance on her final voyage was made up of the 28 men, including Sir Ernest Shackleton, listed below. They were accompanied by Mrs Chippy, a male ship's cat, and originally sixty-nine sledge dogs with additional litters of puppies born during the expedition. After the Endurance became trapped in pack ice and was destroyed, Shackleton decided that Mrs Chippy and some of the younger dogs would not survive and had to be shot.
- Sir Ernest Shackleton, expedition leader
- Frank Wild, second-in-command
- Frank Worsley, captain and navigator
- Lionel Greenstreet, first officer
- Tom Crean, second officer
- Alfred Cheetham, third officer
- Hubert Hudson, navigator
- Lewis Rickinson, engineer
- Alexander Kerr, engineer
- Alexander Macklin, surgeon
- James McIlroy, surgeon
- Sir James Wordie, geologist
- Leonard Hussey, meteorologist
- Reginald James, physicist
- Robert Clark, biologist
- Frank Hurley, photographer
- George Marston, artist
- Thomas Orde-Lees, motor expert and storekeeper
- Harry "Chippy" McNish, carpenter
- Charles Green, cook
- Walter How, able seaman
- William Bakewell, able seaman
- Timothy McCarthy, able seaman
- Thomas McLeod, able seaman
- John Vincent, boatswain
- Ernest Holness, stoker
- William Stephenson, stoker
- Perce Blackborow, steward
Legacy
Two Antarctic patrol ships of the Royal Navy have been named Endurance in honour of Shackleton's ship. The first , launched in May 1956 and given the pennant number A171 sometime later, served as an ice patrol and hydrographic survey ship until 1986. The second was bought from Norway in 1991, where she had been named MV Polar Circle. After initially keeping that name, she was renamed Endurance, serving as an icebreaker. The SpaceX Crew Dragon Endurance was named in part in honour of the ship. In 2021, Lindblad Expeditions in conjunction with National Geographic launched the Endurance, a polar cruise ship named in honour of Shackleton's voyage.
LEGO released a set based on the Endurance for Black Friday, 29 November 2024.
See also
- List of Antarctic exploration ships from the Heroic Age, 1897–1922