![]() Read also: Antarctic Treaty members agree to protect Shackleton's Endurance wreck 3.000 meters deep in the Weddell SeaĪs it was well publicized the proud Endurance never made it: over a century ago, in November 1915 it was trapped by floes, crushed and sent 3,000 meters deep under the permanent ice pack. This was the starting point for the captivating book The Ship Beneath the Sea, The discovery of Shacketon's Endurance, the flagship of the mighty Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, which at the time of the great explorers in early nineteen hundreds, had the purpose of achieving the first crossing of the White Continent from the Weddell Sea via the South Pole to the Ross Sea. “Well, what about the Endurance,” was the seed of the challenge suggested by a good friend of maritime archeologist Mensun Bound when they met in south Kensington at Caffe Nero, for a coffee in the summer of August 2012. “We are not sorry to see the last of the wreck for we have rifled it of everything likely to be of value to us,” he wrote in his diary.Bound achieved the crowning of an accomplishment for a boy from the South Atlantic who will ever have his name very close to that of the explorer Shackleton. Photographer Frank Hurley recorded that said the ship had become "an object of depression to all who turned their eyes in that direction.” However other members of the crew were less devastated by the loss. ![]() At 5pm she went down by the head, the stern was the last to go underwater. Saw the funnel dip behind a hummock suddenly. The final moments of Endurance are recorded in Shackleton’s diaries, in which he wrote: "She went today. “It was absolutely in excess of what I dared hope we would see.” The rumour swept through the ship and we all rushed to the monitoring station and there we saw a clear target, 10,000 feet below, and subsequent surveys showed it was Endurance. The salty sea water also allows the temperature to fall below freezing, slowing down microbial growth, and the ship was found 10,000 feet down, below where light can penetrate, which prevents colonisation by damaging photosynthesising organisms.ĭescribing the moment the ship was found, Dan Snow, the presenter, who was filming a documentary about the expedition, said: “It was one of the most extraordinary moments of my life. “Antarctica is also protected by the circumpolar current which isolates it from other oceans, and stops worm larvae from getting in.” So seeing that thing gleaming is quite astonishing. ![]() The worms scrape away at the wood, and they carry a consortium of weird bacteria that break it down, and when they make these holes other bacteria and fungi get in, speeding up the degradation. “Anywhere else you put down a block of wood, at any depth, it comes back with borings. “I was sceptical that Endurance would ever be found, but we were jumping up and down when we saw it because we made this hypothesis that it would be perfectly preserved, and it was. “We had hypothesised that the little worms which normally eat the hulls and timbers of ships wouldn’t be there, as there have been no trees in Antarctica for millions of years," he said. The ship eventually sank on November 21 1915, leaving the crew stranded, until Shackleton embarked on an extraordinary rescue mission, bringing all his men home.ĭr Glover made the claim following experiments where he left whale bone and wood in the Weddell Sea for a year and found that, although the bone was badly damaged, the wood was largely untouched. Shackleton’s expedition left England in August 1914 intending to achieve the first crossing of Antarctica from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea, via the South Pole.īut by January 1915, Endurance became trapped in the ice and by October had been badly damaged by the pressure of the surrounding floes, forcing the 28 men on board to abandon ship. The ship was found by a group of marine archaeologists, scientists and shipwreck experts on March 5 this year, by chance the 100th anniversary of the burial of Shackleton. Experts also warned that climate change could see a rise in wood-eating worms, putting the wreck at risk and making its salvage more pressing. “Without any exaggeration, this is the finest wooden shipwreck I have ever seen - by far,” said Mensun Bound, a marine archaeologist and the director of exploration on the Endurance22 expedition.Īlthough there are no current plans to raise Endurance, Mr Bound told The Telegraph that it may be possible within the next 50 years.
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