Explorers find the famous polar ship Endurance, entombed a century ago
The ship at the heart of Ernest Shackleton's doomed mission was discovered two miles down in icy Antarctic waters. The expedition leader says 'I could feel the breath of Shackleton on my back.'
For more than a century, the famed exploration vessel Endurance lay trapped in the Antarctic, entombed in the depths of one of world's most remote seas. For the first time, explorers have discovered Ernest Shackleton's sunken ship, less than five miles from its last reported location in 1915, they announced today.
When the world's first watery images of the ship (pictured above) emerged on Saturday, "it was like my whole life funneled down to an instant," says Mensun Bound, a leader of the expedition. A day later, a remote undersea camera showed the stern of the remarkably preserved British polar vessel, the brass letters of the word "Endurance" clearly visible. "I could feel the breath of Shackleton on my back," he tells Nat Geo.
Read our account and watch video of the discovery here, and see background on Shackleton's courageous efforts to bring his crew home safely. Shackleton won the National Geographic Society's highest award for his Antarctic work.
Pictured above, the icebreaker Agulhas II pushed through huge slabs of ice to get to the site where the Endurance sank in the Weddell Sea. The discovery will be the subject of a documentary airing globally on National Geographic Channels and streaming on Disney+. Our TikTok video on the discovery has become a phenomenon, with more than 3.8 million views in its first few hours.
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IN A FEW WORDS
What the ice gets, the ice keeps.Ernest Shackleton, Antarctic expedition leader who saved lives after his ship sank in 1915, From: Wreck of fabled vessel found deep below the polar ice
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