One of the world's most legendary shipwrecks may be the Endurance, which sank in the Antarctic ice sea during an Antarctic expedition by British explorer Ernest Shackleton. The 144-foot-long three-masted vessel witnessed Shackleton and his crew struggling to survive on the Antarctic ice for more than 10 months, and although they never reached the South Pole, this survival story is one of the greatest legends in the history of exploration.
The crew managed to escape five months after the ship sank in November 1915, but the shipwreck remained untraceable for more than a hundred years. It wasn't until Wednesday, local time, that a search team of explorers, marine archaeologists and technicians, Endurance22, announced that they had found the sunken Perseverance.
Video of the shipwreck filmed by the search team provided by Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust (FMHT) (01:13)
A search worth ten million dollars
The site where The Perseverance sank was probably nearly 3,000 meters below the ice's coldest waters on Earth, making it difficult to find. This time, the Perseverance 22 team searched within 150 square miles around the bottom of the Weddell Sea in the east of the Antarctic Peninsula where it sank, and it took more than two weeks to finally find it. In a statement, expedition leader John Shears proudly declared: "We discovered the Perseverance, created polar history, and successfully completed the world's most challenging shipwreck search." ”
The team found the shipwreck about 4 miles south of the last location recorded by Shackleton's captain and navigator, Frank Vosley. The water temperature here is very low, and there are no wood-eating marine creatures that shipwrecks are most afraid of, so the appearance of the Kennin is fairly well preserved. Mensan Bond, the expedition's exploration director and marine archaeologist who has found many shipwrecks, said the Perseverance was the best-preserved vessel he had ever seen, "it stands upright on the seabed, is not covered by the seabed, and is very well preserved." ”
The name of the ship at the stern is still clearly visible Figure Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust (FMHT)
While the Perseverance was trapped on the ice, Shackleton's photographer Frank Hurley took photographs of it showing that its mast and rigging had been badly damaged and partially collapsed, in line with the video taken by the expedition, in addition to which the ship was remarkably intact and, in Bond's words, "almost intact." Its wooden material, though destroyed, has not been scattered, and the name "ENDURANCE" at the stern is still clearly visible, and for it time seems to have stood still on the day it sank.
"The moment I saw the name of the ship, my jaw dropped." John Sheares told the BBC, "During the search, we had to fight changing sea ice, snowstorms and temperatures as low as minus 18 degrees Celsius. We achieved what many said was unattainable. ”
The mother ship of the survey, an icebreaker from South Africa , "Agulhas II" Figure Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust (FMHT)
The search for the shipwreck cost more than $10 million and was provided by a donor who asked not to be named. The team searched the ocean floor twice a day with an unmanned diver for about 6 hours each time. The divers use sonar to scan the smooth seabed for anything above the seabed. After finding the wreck, the team used equipment such as high-resolution cameras to produce detailed images and scans. In the future, they also plan to shoot a documentary.
Crew receiving data at Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust (FMHT),
A legend from 107 years ago
Shackleton was a famous British polar explorer in the early 20th century, and he was the closest person on Earth to the South Pole before the Successful Arrival of the Swede Amundsen. In 1914, he organized his third Antarctic expedition, sailing the Perseverance from London. This time, his goal is to cross the Antarctic continent on foot.
His plan was that after arriving in the Weddell Sea aboard the Perseverance, he would lead a team of six from there across the Antarctic continent all the way to Vaschel Bay. Meanwhile, another ship, the Aurora, led another team to McMurdo Bay on the other side of the continent, where they would be responsible for laying supply depots on the Great Ice Barrier for Shackleton's team to complete the 2,900-kilometer journey on the ice.
Perseverance in the British Dockyard
On December 5, 1914, perseverance departed from south Georgia, where it had previously docked, to the Weddell Sea. Two days after leaving port, the ship encountered ice floes and sailed slowly southward in the ice, where conditions deteriorated, with a daily journey of less than 48 kilometers. By 19 January 1915, the Perseverance was completely frozen in a piece of ice floes in the Weddell Sea, unable to move.
Frank Hurley photographs the steam-powered Stoics trying to navigate the ice floes of Wikipedia
Shackleton and the crew waited on the ship for more than half a year, hoping that when spring came, the ship would be able to get out of trouble as the ice melted. However, in September, when spring really came, the rupture and movement of the ice layer caused great pressure on the hull. On October 24, water began to pour into the hull, and a few days later, Shackleton ordered the ship to be abandoned.
Scene of crew members abandoning the ship Figure Wikipedia
The crew had to camp on ice floes for nearly six months, but were never able to drift to the mainland. Finally, since the ice floes broke in two, Shackleton ordered the crew to enter the lifeboat and look for the nearest land.
Crew members standing in front of a capsized ship pictured Wikipedia
After five days at sea, the exhausted crew finally reached Koh Chang, about 557 kilometers from the sinking site of the Perseverance. For the first time in 497 days, they stood on solid ground.
It is worth mentioning that Shackleton frostbitten his finger during the trip because he gave his gloves to the photographer Frank Hurley who lost the gloves.
Koh Chang is uninhabited, far from any route, and the crew cannot be spotted by chance. So Shackleton decided to take the 20-foot-long James Kelder, a small lifeboat, with a crew of 5, and ventured to the South Georgia Whaling Station, 800 miles away, for help. Even, for the safety of the crew who remained on Koh Chang, Shackleton only carried supplies for four weeks.
For 15 days, the boat sailed in the midst of terrifying waves. Whale captains in this area are called "cemeteries", and lifeboats are at risk of capsizing at any time. When they arrived in South Georgia, a hurricane almost prevented them from making landfall. Later, the crew learned that the hurricane had sunk a 500-ton steamship from Buenos Aires to South Georgia.
The next day, they were finally able to land on the uninhabited South Bank. Shackleton decided to cross the island over land instead of risking out to sea again to the whaling station on the north shore. With two crew members, dressed in ordinary boots and a carpenter's chisel, he connected them with a rope, and thus walked 51 kilometers on the island's dangerous snow-covered mountains, which lasted 36 hours, and finally arrived at the whaling station.
It wasn't until October 1955 that another explorer, Duncan Carse, successfully crossed South Georgia. He took the same route as Shackleton and his party, and he couldn't help but sigh, "I don't know how they did it, only that they had to do it." ”
Upon arrival at the whaling station, Shackleton immediately began rescuing the remaining crew. However, attempts to travel to Koh Chang failed three times due to too many ice floes. Later, with the help of the Chilean government, a Chilean Navy sea tugboat, The Yeso, finally managed to reach Koh Chang on August 30, 1916, by which time the crew had been stranded for four and a half months.
Shackleton sets off for Koh Chang to carry out the rescue, and the scene of people bidding farewell to Wikipedia
Although never reached the South Pole, Shackleton became a Hero of Britain. He was tenacious and courageous, and as captain he would never abandon his crew in any difficult and desperate situation, so people always hoped to find the Perseverance that bears witness to history. However, since the Weddell Sea was always covered in thick ice, it was difficult for the search team to get close to the approximate location of the sinking, regardless of the search.
Ironically, under the effect of global warming, the extent of Antarctic sea ice has reached the lowest record in the satellite age (dating back to the 1970s) in the past month, which gave Perseverance 22 favorable search conditions to eventually find the shipwreck. Can it be said that human beings may have "conquered" nature in another way that Shackleton never imagined?