Historic discovery: Endurance sailboat found 3,000 meters off Antarctica

The Endurance hull was discovered untouched at the Wendell Sea at a depth of 3,000 meters, the ship of the British explorer Ernest Sackletonwhich was crushed by the ice in 1915 off it Antarctica. It was announced by the exploratory mission organized by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust.

“We are very excited about locating Endurance and receiving visuals,” said Mansun Boud, head of the mission.

“It is by far the most beautiful wooden hull I have ever seen. He stands upright, very proud at the bottom of the sea, untouched, in amazing condition “, he added.

“We can even read the name Endurance engraved in a circle on the stern.”

The Endurance hull was located about six miles from its site shipwreckas reported by international agencies and relayed by the Athenian News Agency.

The mission that became a legend

The exploration mission, consisting of about a hundred members, departed from Cape Town on February 5 aboard a South African icebreaker, hoping to locate the wrecked ship by Ernest Sackleton before the end of the summer in the southern hemisphere.

The Endurance set sail from the British island of South Georgia in the South Atlantic at the end of 1914 carrying the Imperial Trans-Antarctic exploration mission under Sackleton, in the first attempt to cross the Antarctic continent from the Wendell Sea to the Sea. south pole.

However, in January 1915, the ship was trapped in the ice of the Wendell Sea, near the Larsen Glacier, where it remained trapped for months, sank slowly and sank in November 1915 at a depth of 3,000 meters.

The mission became a legend due to the survival conditions of the crew that camped for months on the ice before it broke, then was transported by lifeboats to the inhospitable icy island of Elephant. But also because of the daring voyage of Ernest Sackleton himself, who left in an Endurance boat and a small number of crew members to seek help on the island of South Georgia and thus manage to save his entire crew.

Sackleton’s Endurance22 search mission used state-of-the-art technology, in particular two submarine drones, to explore the maritime zone described by Sackleton himself as “the worst area of ​​the worst sea in the world”.