In 1915, pack ice sank Shackleton’s Endurance; 107 years later, explorers found its wreck remarkably intact beneath the Weddell Sea

For more than a century, one of the most famous ships in exploration history sat lost under Antarctic ice. Then, on March 5, 2022, a search team found it. The Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust announced the discovery of the wreck of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance, 3,008 metres (9,869ft) below the surface of the Weddell Sea, close to the site where its captain recorded its sinking 107 years ago.

A ship crushed by ice, a crew that refused to quit

Shackleton sailed in December 1914 to make the first land crossing of Antarctica. According to the account provided by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust on the journey, Endurance never managed to make it to the continent. The vessel was trapped in pack ice in the Weddell Sea, where the moving ice pressed against the hull until it eventually gave way, causing Endurance to sink on November 21, 1915. This left Shackleton and his 27-man crew, 28 in total, stranded on the floating ice.


What followed was one of history’s most famous survival stories, according to the trust’s account of the expedition. For months, the group camped on the floating ice before moving to Elephant Island through row boats. Shackleton then sailed across some 800 miles of the dangerous Southern Ocean with just five other people in an open boat, the James Caird, to South Georgia. According to the trust, all crew members lived to tell the tale.

Why it took over a century to find the wreck

The Weddell Sea is among the most remote places on Earth. Sea ice is constantly moving, storms can turn violent within hours, and the seabed is nearly two miles down. Earlier attempts to locate Endurance had failed in that remote, ice-choked stretch of ocean.

The 2022 mission, called Endurance22, was operated from the South African icebreaker S.A. Agulhas II. As the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust explained, the exploration team utilized the Sabertooth underwater search vessels manufactured by the Swedish company Saab to explore the seafloor within the search zone that was identified beforehand in Cape Town. Dr John Shears led the expedition, and Mensun Bound directed the underwater search. The wreck came into view on camera, and Bound called it the finest wooden shipwreck he had ever seen, describing it as “upright, well proud of the seabed, intact, and in a brilliant state of preservation.”

Why the ship still looks almost new

Most people might find this part surprising. Wood is expected to deteriorate and be consumed by marine life within decades of sinking. So how did Endurance remain in such good condition?

One of the factors here is the biology of the Southern Ocean. According to the study, ‘Bone-eating worms from the Antarctic: the contrasting fate of whale and wood remains on the Southern Ocean seafloor,’ published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, there is a group of wood-consuming mollusks known as Xylophaga that usually consume sunken wood everywhere else but in Antarctica. The scientists suggest that the Antarctic Circumpolar Current acts as a barrier, keeping those larvae out of Antarctic waters; bone-eating organisms thrive there, but wood-eaters do not. Without its usual wood-eating organisms, wood on the Antarctic seafloor does not decay much, which may have helped preserve Endurance’s timbers and even the ship’s name painted on its stern.

A navigator whose notes from 100 years ago still worked

The wreck was found within four miles of the coordinates noted by Captain Worsley of Endurance in his logbook on the day the ship went down, the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust noted. Captain Worsley did not have the advantage of any form of GPS technology or satellites when taking his measurements. He had a sextant, a chronometer and years of experience. His navigation was so accurate that it guided a 21st-century search team almost straight to the wreck more than a century later.

More than just a shipwreck

There was more to this expedition than locating a well-known shipwreck. Researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute were also on board the Agulhas II, measuring sea-ice thickness and studying ice movement across the Weddell Sea, work that helps scientists monitor how the region is responding to warming. The team also ran an online educational program during the search, letting people around the world follow along in real time as the discovery unfolded.

More than three years on, that discovery still shapes how the wreck is treated. Endurance is protected under the Antarctic Treaty as a Historic Site and Monument, meaning it cannot be touched, moved, or disturbed. It will remain exactly where it sank, preserving a story of endurance that has lasted more than a century.