Johannesburg. ship wreckage endurance, of the Anglo-Irish explorer Ernest Shackleton, were found in Antarctica, more than a century after having starred in one of the most famous shipwrecks in history, those responsible for the expedition reported yesterday.
Endurance was discovered in the Weddell Sea, at a depth of 3,08 meters and about 6 kilometers from the place where it sank.
“We are overwhelmed to have located and captured images of the vessel,” said Mensun Bond, director of the mission organized by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust.
“It is the most beautiful sunken ship I have ever seen: it stands tall, proud at the bottom of the sea, intact, in a fantastic state of preservation,” he said.
“You can even read the name Endurance at the stern,” he said.
The search expedition included some 100 people and set sail on February 5 from Cape Town, South Africa, aboard a South African icebreaker, hoping to find these remains.
More than a century ago, Shackleton wanted to cross Antarctica, on a journey of 2,900 kilometers through the frozen continent, from the Weddell Sea to the Roos Sea, passing through the South Pole.
But in January 1915, the ship became trapped in pack ice in the Weddell Sea. The ship remained blocked for months and finally was perforated by the ice and sank.
The expedition then became a survival mission for the crew, who camped for months and finally took refuge on the inhospitable Elephant Island.
Shackleton went in search of help with some companions in a precarious boat to the South Georgia Islands, in the South Atlantic, returned and managed to rescue the entire crew alive. The trip is remembered as heroic.
This year the expedition that found the remains of the Endurance used state-of-the-art technology, such as underwater drones, to explore this area, described by Shackleton as the “worst part of the worst sea in the world”.
The research expedition announced Wednesday that it had images of the wooden wreck.
The ship’s rudder remains intact. Equipment is also stacked against the railing, as if the crew had just left the ship. One of the masts is broken, but the structure, although damaged, is still standing.
The wreck is protected as a historic site and nothing has been brought to the surface.
The works of Endurance22 they are the most complex underwater project ever carried out,” said Nico Vincent, a member of the mission. Scientists also studied the effects of climate change.
Stefanie Arndt, a researcher at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, wrote on Twitter that she had collected “an incredible number” of 630 ice and snow samples.
The crew will now embark on an 11-day voyage back to Cape Town.
Shackleton is one of the great names in the history of Antarctic exploration, along with the Norwegian Roald Amundsen, who in 1911 became the first man to reach the South Pole, and the British Robert Falcon Scott. The Anglo-Irishman died in January 1922.
#find #remains #Endurance #century #shipwreck #Antarctica