What's the story?

THE extraordinary discovery of the Antarctic exploration ship Endurance took place at the weekend on the 100th anniversary of the funeral of Sir Ernest Shackleton, who led the expedition and saved all the crew with a legendary feat of seamanship.

Endurance was found in 10,000ft (3000m) of water in the Weddell Sea and is in a remarkable state of preservation due to the cold of the sea and the lack of vegetation at the area in which the ship sank in 1915. The Endurance22 expedition to find the wreck was greatly assisted by the fact that Endurance’s skipper and navigator Frank Worsley left very specific details as to where the sinking occurred. Nevertheless, given the depths they were surveying and the fact that ice often closes in on the Weddell Sea, it was thought impossible to find the wreck after so long. Many media reports are calling the ship HMS Endurance. That is incorrect as the original Endurance was never a Royal Navy or Government vessel.

What was the 1914 journey all about? 

ERNEST Shackleton had been involved in Polar exploration before he conceived the idea of an expedition to make the first land crossing of the Antarctic. What became the Imperial Trans-Antarctic expedition was scheduled to last for up to two years and involved two ships, Endurance and Aurora. The latter’s name rarely features in accounts of Endurance but captained by Aeneas Mackintosh, who would have become chief of Clan Mackintosh, Aurora played a vital role though Mackintosh and two other members of its crew sadly died. I will tell Aurora’s story in a future Back In The Day.

The National:

Britain had been stunned when Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen’s team became the first to reach the South Pole in December, 1911, beating the ill-fated British expedition led by Robert Falcon Scott. Shackleton declared that polar exploration was not finished and his aim was to take Endurance to the Weddell Sea and make landfall there, while Aurora went to the Ross Sea on the other side of the Antarctic and set up depots inland so that Shackleton’s men and dogs could cross the continent.

The legend is that Shackleton advertised in The Times for his crew but that advert has never been found. Instead he got together a 27-strong crew for Endurance and all of them were pretty much masters of their various crafts. He also took along a photographer, Frank Hurley, and an artist, George Marston, and there was even a stowaway, Welsh sailor Perce Blackborow.

Who was Shackleton? 

BORN in County Kildare in 1874, Ernest Shackleton was an Anglo-Irish sailor turned explorer who left the merchant service to join the Royal Navy in 1901. He was almost immediately appointed to the Discovery Expedition named after the Dundee-built ship that now rests back in that city. That expedition to the Antarctic was led by Naval officer Robert Falcon Scott. Shackleton had to go home on health grounds and in 1904 he took the post of secretary of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society and stood unsuccessfully for Parliament in Dundee in 1906.

The National:

Aided by Clydeside magnate William Beardmore, Shackleton put together the Nimrod Expedition which saw a Scot, Alistair Mackay, become one of the first three men to reach the magnetic South Pole. Shackelton was knighted on his return to Britain and began canvassing support for another expedition.

Were Scots involved? 

VERY much so. One of the chief backers was Dundee jute merchant Sir James Caird, and William Spiers Bruce, who had led the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition (1902-04) and was instrumental in helping Shackleton plan his adventure. Four of the crew were Scots – biologist Robert Clark, geologist carpenter Harry “Chippy” McNish, and Able Seaman Thomas McLeod who had already won the Polar Medal for his part in Scott’s Terra Nova Expedition.

What happened to Endurance?

THE ship became trapped in the ice in the Weddell Sea in February 1915. It drifted with the pack ice during the Antarctic winter until the pressure of ice floes began to crush Endurance’s hull. Shackleton gave the order to abandon ship on October 27, 1915. Endurance finally sank on November 21 – and taking to a large ice floe, the crew endured months of freezing temperatures and a brief landing on uninhabited and inhospitable Elephant Island before Shackleton decided to sail for help in the ship’s boat, the James Caird, named after his Scottish patron, with five crew members including Worsley and McNish.

The National:

On April 24, 1916, the James Caird, much modified by McNish, set out for South Georgia 800 miles (1300km) across the Southern Ocean. In an epic journey the boat made it to the island which Shackleton traversed to get help from Stromness whaling station. It took three attempts to get back to Elephant Island, but Shackleton finally made it in the Chilean steam tug Yelcho on August 30, 1916, and all returned safely to Britain.

It was wartime and two members of the Endurance crew were later killed in action, while Shackleton made another voyage to the Southern Ocean, dying of a heart attack on January 5, 1922, in a ship anchored off South Georgia.

Did the Endurance name live on?

IT most certainly did. The name HMS Endurance was given to a Danish-built Royal Navy ice patrol ship that was bought in 1967 and served until 1991. It was the 1981 proposal to decommission the ship which sent a message to the Argentine military junta that the UK was no longer interested in maintaining a presence in the South Atlantic and may have triggered military dictator General Leopoldo Galtieri’s decision to invade the Falkland Islands, though his lack of popularity was the main reason for the attempt to capture the Malvinas, as Argentina calls the islands.

By coincidence, that HMS Endurance saw action during the Falklands War at South Georgia, the island which Shackleton crossed to save his crew. Another HMS Endurance served as an icebreaker from 1991 to 2008, and the Crew Dragon Endurance spacecraft was named partially in honour of the vessel whose remains have just been found.