For anyone who’s familiar with the story of Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton and his legendary ship Endurance…
The vessel, which in 1915 had to be abandoned, has now been found at a depth of 3000 m. Today’s Guardian has the story, including close-up video footage.
Fascinating story. I became interested in Antarctic exploration while dating the grandnephew of Roald Amundsen.
That’s incredible.
Not long ago I read Alfred Lansing’s book Endurance (well, “read” - I got the audio book). It’s an amazing story, and what those men went through with the outfitting available to them 100+ years ago … mind boggling.
Wow.
Hijack: the Guardian article quotes someone using “proud of” as a nautical term meaning “well clear of; unobstructed by” — in this case, that the ship is still upright, most of it well above the sea floor.
I couldn’t find much info on this sense of “proud,” but I did find another instance of it (some rigging being “proud of” — not touching — the mast).
Between this mention and your post in the " Are you related to or have you met anyone famous" thread, you’ve led quite an interesting life so far!
Fantastic book. I also listened to it.
Excellent!
I just came to post this. What an amazing find.
BBC News - Endurance: Shackleton’s lost ship is found in Antarctic
I’ll third the recommendation of Lansing’s book. Well worth the read.
Is that a nautical term? I didn’t read anything into it other than to mean ‘standing upright’, ‘clear of’. A phrase I might hear in non nautical references (but what do I know - British English is scattered with nautical idioms).
It’s not a strictly nautical term, just a usage that has fallen by the wayside over the years.
There is a medical term - proud flesh - that is an excess of tissue regrowth at a wound site. I see it on horses, not people, but basically you get a lump of new flesh growing up above, or proud of, the normal skin surface.
I’m delighted to hear this; great news and amazing pictures! Shackleton has always been a hero of mine (I even named a Starfleet shuttlecraft after him in a Star Trek RPG I used to run).
The pictures are amazing. The frigid water has perfectly preserved the wood.
It would be fascinating to probe inside with a submersible. It’s probably full of personal artifacts. But that’s not allowed by treaty.
We just watched a documentary a couple of weeks ago, where they didn’t find it. The discovery is a nice ending!
Fourthing! I just read the book a couple months ago and it is a great read. I am still amazed that not a single man died during that ordeal. I’ve read other exploration books that didn’t turn out so well like Greely’s arctic expedition.
I know a great-great-nephew of Shackleton. Will send him the link, although he’s probably already seen it.
So, are there any famous wrecks left to be found? They’ve found Shackleton’s ridiculously remote Endurance and Grissom’s ridiculously tiny Liberty Bell. What’s left? Parts of Earhart’s Electra seem to be found very other year or so, but never conclusively.
I know a great-great-something (ish) granddaughter! I think. She’s got his surname anyway, and there’s a family connection somehow.
I don’t think any piece of wreckage that’s been verified as actually originating from Earhat’s Electra has ever been found. People have found various plane wrecks that they claim are an Electra 10E but turn out not to be, pieces of various planes that are claimed to be from an Electra but are not , or just random junk and announce that her plane has been found. Each one of those announcements has led nowhere that I’m aware of. I’d love to be proven wrong.
When the Endurance went down her location was carefully recorded by her crew. The group that located the Endurance noted that those precise readings helped them locate the ship. Much like the Titanic, it appears that finding it simply (for very liberal interpretation of that word) involved starting at that location and moving outward from there – although to be fair, the Titanc’s crew recorded the wrong location when it sunk. Despite that searchers still had a good idea of where to look.
With Earhart’s Electra, we have no clue where to even begin searching. The Pacific is just too big. Similar problems plague the search for MH370.
Wow, the condition of the Endurance is just amazing.
Shackleton’s boat journey from Elephant Island to South Georgia remains one of the most amazing sea journeys in the world. And when his small crew got to South Georgia, they smashed ashore on the opposite side of the island from the whaling station.
No problem. They just had to climb glacier studded mountains that had never been climbed or mapped before, after camping in rough conditions on ice for months, followed by a sea journey in a jury-rigged boat in the roughest seas on the planet.
I can imagine the looks on the faces of the whaling town folks when these bedraggled people came into town from the inaccesible mountain range.
It’s probably not going to tell us anything we didn’t already know. Shackleton’s Boat Journey is well-documented and Endurance was deserted in an orderly manner, as they had been expecting it.