A Plucky Robot Found the Long-Lost Endurance Shipwreck

In late 1914, explorer Ernest Shackleton and 27 crewmen sailed into the icy waters around Antarctica. Their state-of-the-art ship Endurance stretched 144 feet, with three towering masts, its hull ultra-reinforced to resist crumpling in the floating ice. The crew’s plan was to hike across the frozen continent, but the sea had other ideas.

Endurance got stuck off the coast and was slowly crushed by the floating ice, forcing the men into one of the most famous feats of survival in history. (Do yourself a favor and immediately read Alfred Lansing’s book on the expedition.) They endured for over a year, scurrying across ice floes to hunt penguins and seals, before reaching an uninhabited island. From there, Shackleton and a small party sailed 800 miles in a little boat rescued from the Endurance, made land on the island of South Georgia, and hiked to a whaling station, then returned by ship to pick up the rest of the crew.

Over a century later, scientists have now used another state-of-the-art vehicle to finally glimpse the long-lost wreck of the Endurance. Dangling from an icebreaker in Antarctica’s Weddell Sea, an underwater robot called Sabertooth dove almost 10,000 feet, painting the seafloor with blasts of sonar that betrayed the unmistakable form of a ship. Switching to the robot’s cameras, the crew captured video of a stunningly well-preserved wooden vessel. 

“It's a huge achievement—from the historical point of view—for the story of Shackleton and his crew, as well as an extremely strong achievement from the technology point of view, because it was probably one of the most complicated shipwrecks to discover,” says Nico Vincent, subsea project manager of the expedition, which was organized by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust. 

Photograph: Nick Birtwistle/Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust 

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