Shackleton's lost ship may be about to be found. What of their forgotten New Zealand sister ship left, stranded on the ice flow?
It is hard to write what I feel. To a sailor his ship is more than a floating home, and in the Endurance I had centred ambitions, hopes, and desires. Now, straining and groaning, her timbers cracking and her wounds gaping, she is slowly giving up her sentient life at the very outset of her career. - Ernest Shackleton - Wednesday, October 27, 1915
An expedition has arrived in Antarctica, in search of the lost relic of the heroic age: Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance.
One hundred and seven years ago, the Irish explorer Ernest Henry Shackleton led one of the most daring rescues from the continent. Trapped by sea ice in the Weddell Sea the wooden ship was crushed, leaving Shackleton and his men to hike their life rafts to safety.
All 28 men survived but the Endurance was left behind on the sea bed.
Photographer Frank Hurley's images of the wreckage and escape helped illustrate the peril but also the larger-than-life heroic characters. Restored motion pictures were recently screened at the BFI Southbank, London.
The story of Shackleton and New Zealander Frank Worsley's incredible 1300km sail to South Georgia has been retold many times.
Endurance 22 aims to write a closing chapter for the doomed expedition, using the latest scientific technology to discover the famous Antarctic wreck.
Expedition leader John Shears said finding the ship would be the most significant discovery since the Titanic and "a landmark moment for what we hope will be a truly historic expedition."
But while Shackleton and his crew were making their way to safety there was another ship on the other side of the continent, the Aurora, facing equally dire circumstances.
"We must not forget that the expedition had two parts," said David Lamont, Chairman of The Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust. While the Endurance's crew are celebrated, the sister ship is often forgotten.
The Endurance was just one half of the 1914 expedition to cross the continent of Antarctica.
While they set up in the Weddell Sea, a second team had sailed from Hobart to the Ross Sea as a welcoming party. Their job was to set up supply depots for the crossing party. Working inland as far as the Beardsley glacier, they sledged to within 100 nautical miles of the South Pole.
Without these Shackleton's party would have been walking to their deaths.
However, when disaster struck the Endurance and the party turned back, they failed to inform Aurora about the delay.
The Ross Sea team were trapped on the ice for nine months without help. When the ship was carried away by pack ice, the supply party were stranded. Waiting for a crossing that never came by the time some of the Aurora's remaining sailors were eventually rescued in January 1917.
Having left home in 1914, they were oblivious to the fact that the First World War had happened.
The Lost Men
After being damaged in sea ice and drifting from the Ross Sea, Aurora had to return to New Zealand for repairs she could not afford. Those left behind on the ice had no means of rescue.
Of the ten men stranded on the ice three would never return.
Victor Hayward wrote in his diary that
"We are 10 men who have to relieve Shackleton at the Beardmore Glacier 400 miles distant without any equipment to speak of." to "do our damnedest,"
The captain Aeneas Mackintosh and Hayward were lost in a blizzard.
Arnold Spencer-Smith, the ship's chaplain and closest thing to amateur photographer died of scurvy.
It was only In 2013, the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust discovered expedition photographs in the Cape Evans hut where they sheltered.
They were able to develop twenty-two images from the 1914-17 expedition. A snapshot of the party largely unseen and forgotten for 99 years.
Author Kelly Tyler-Lewis was inspired to write 'The Lost Men' about the Ross Sea Party, partially because of how ordinary and inexperienced the men were.
"Only two had Antarctic experience—they included a minister, a schoolteacher, and a clerk," she said.
They were the B-Team in every respect. However their setting of resupply depots saw them spend longer on the ice than any other explorers of their age, including Scott, Shackleton and Amundsen.
"Unsupported, they travelled 1,356 nautical miles. And they did it, not for glory, but because they believed lives depended on them."
Shackleton, or 'the Boss' as he came to be known, was a master not only of exploring but also in storytelling. His Antarctic Crossing was a failure, but following his escape from the Weddell Sea he and his men were celebrated as heroes.
Frank Hurley's photos were a big part of telling that story. Images that largely omitted the fact the Aurora ever existed.
Donald Lamont feels that the Ross Sea team were largely forgotten because - until recently - we had so little imagery of them.
"I find it a pity that in the opening frames of Hurley's film there is the image of the captain of Aurora and that's the last you hear of it," says Lamont. "There's no other reference to the Ross Sea Party."
On return to New Zealand, Shackleton donated proceeds of a lecturing tour to the families of the missing men.
The Endurance
At the beginning of the month the ice-strengthened Agulhas II departed Cape Town for the Weddell Sea. The search platform for the Endurance 22 expedition, this isn't it's first time looking for Shackleton's wreck.
It almost suffered the same fate, stuck in polar sea ice.
An earlier mission was abandoned in 2019 after losing a remote, unmanned submarine. The search was cut short as the ice pack closed in around them, threatening to trap the Agulhas.
The technology might be better but the dangers remain the same.
As Shackleton put it, Endurance was "crushed like an egg-shell amid the shattering masses."
Frank Hurley's images show broken masts and rigging and splinters of the ship. However Endurance 22 expects to find more than matchwood in their search.
The old Norwegian sailing ship was designed to be a luxurious transport for polar hunting parties and tourists. Covered in hard Greenheart wood to deflect icebergs and built from solid oak, she was meant to be able to survive the pack ice of the southern ocean.
Scanning the Weddell Sea floor using LiDAR lasers and cameras the Agulhas will build up a picture of the wreck. Unmanned Saab submarines will dive to the 3km depths below pack ice. Nothing will be removed.
"The wreck is protected under the Antarctic Treaty. Our search is a non-intrusive search," says Lamont.
"From our imagery we want to make it accessible, in a way to say 'you do not need to go there and poke around."
The window
Using the original last positions calculated by captain Worsley the Endurance 22 expedition has narrowed down a small search window in the 2.8 million square km of ice.
Although the accuracy and scarcity of the captain's entries make this more difficult, Lamont says it's an excellent head start.
"We do have the advantage that it isn't a vast area that we're expected to cover. "
More pressing is the time frame in which the expedition has to work.
Ice becomes thicker and the summer expedition window closes, there is only so long they can spend searching. This is made even more constrained by unpredictable ice and weather conditions.
The Agulhas II has to be back in Cape Town from the 12 March. While the crew can apply for extensions, the lenience is only about the length of time it takes to sail back to South Africa.
Given this fact, the Endurance must be found by the 12 of March or not at all.
Detour: Antarctica is a New Zealand Herald podcast. You can follow the series on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
