The images broadcast around the world are indeed impressive. Thanks to the latest generation of underwater drones, the crew was able to film the century-old relic up close. Passing to her stern, cameras highlighted the metallic lettering of her name surmounting a pole star. Sitting upright, it constitutes what is referred to as a coherent wreck, that is to say, it holds together in one piece. The cold waters of the Antarctic protected it particularly well: the absence of parasites likely to attack the wood made it possible to limit the damage. “Its preservation is absolutely incredible,” added Menson Bound. You can still see the paint! »
The ship got stuck in January 1915 in the ice. The crew and their dogs are killing time.
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Polar mission
In August 1914, Ernest Shackleton left England aboard theEndurance towards Antarctica. This is the third time the explorer has been there. During his first two attempts, he had approached the mythical South Pole without reaching it. And before he had time to make a new attempt, Roald Amundsen, his Norwegian competitor, beat him to the pawn by achieving the coveted feat.
Shackleton was therefore tackling another first: crossing Antarctica from one end to the other via the South Pole. Unfortunately for him and his crew, things don’t go as planned. The particularly thick ice makes navigation difficult. In January 1915, theEndurance is caught in a vice by the packs. It will never come out. Ten months later, in November of the same year, the vessel sank to the bottom of the Weddell Sea.
What will ensure posterity for Shackleton, therefore, is not the success of a world first, but the feat of having survived what was to become the most improbable return trip (the journey of which is detailed on pages 22 and 23). Chasing the few animals present on the sea ice which crackled under their tents, eating their own sled dogs, navigating the cold waters on their lifeboats for hundreds of nautical miles, breaking the ice which formed on the hulls, all the Shackleton’s men survived this nightmare which ended in August 1916, two years after they left England. To this day, Shackleton remains one of the world’s best-known explorers. Consequently, theEndurance is a renowned wreck.
In 2019, it was also John Shears and Menson Bound who sailed the SA needles II to find theEndurance, without success. “We were looking for theEndurance for almost 10 years, explains Menson Bound. First we had this unfortunate attempt. This time everything worked for us! »
Even if “everything worked” in this expedition, that does not mean that things were easy. Research conditions in Antarctica are particularly inhospitable due to very cold temperatures, high winds, blizzards and especially moving ice. Only four ships would have navigated these waters throughout history, according to the estimate of John Shears.
To track down a wreck, we first determine a prospecting area. In the case of theEndurance, she was justly well known. If Shackleton has long been glorified for his qualities as a leader, we discover more and more the crucial role that the captain of the ship, Frank Worsley, played in the rescue. It was his exceptional abilities as a navigator that enabled the expedition not to get lost and to reach Elephant Island, a point in the vastness of the ocean, then South Georgia, another island. As soon as theEndurance was caught in the ice, Worsley continually recorded the crew’s position in a log that still exists.
Once the territory to be explored has been established, it must be squared. As the Weddell Sea is more than 3,000 meters deep and its waters are extraordinarily cold, it was necessary to send underwater drones in order to carry out a side-scan sonar scan. This technology allows scientists to survey the seabed “from the side” rather than looking down on it.
This is where the Sabertooths come into play, hybrid underwater drones, that is to say that can guide themselves autonomously or be remotely controlled. Designed by Saab and the size of a small car, they sailed at 90% of the depth of the water column and were able to sweep a channel of 1,400 m2 for each meter of advance. When operators see a structure that may be wreckage, they rush to explore it to confirm their discovery.
Simple ? Not that much. Using an underwater drone under the ice is extremely complex. These devices must remain in constant communication with the ship’s equipment. He must therefore follow them. But the thick packs of the Weddell Sea complicate this task. You can therefore lose contact with the vehicle. “In open water, it’s not too bad,” says Nicolas Vincent, whom we contacted during his well-deserved vacation in France. We can anticipate where we will find him to reestablish contact and recover him. But with ice cream, it’s not always possible to be there. »
Moreover, during the 2019 expedition, one of these precious robots had been lost. To avoid such a tragedy this time, Nicolas Vincent opted for a drone connected to the boat by an optical fiber fortified with Kevlar. They unrolled it up to eight kilometers long, a record! (continued on page 24)
Worsley’s notes were so accurate that the crew eventually spotted the wreckage four nautical miles from the captain’s estimate.
Why, then, did it take two expeditions to locate it? Ice cream again. As the packs are in constant motion, the boat cannot navigate in a linear fashion. To maximize its chances of covering the entire determined area, the Endurance22 mission had partnered with German scientists, who created a model of ice drift to predict its movement and establish the best path for the next dive.
The exploration of the area was therefore done in pieces, Nicolas Vincent and his team having the responsibility of assembling all the pieces of this puzzle and ensuring that no “holes” were overlooked. “There is a rather amusing story,” says Nicolas Vincent. The southeastern part of the area to be explored was covered for several days by old ice which was very thick and whose dimension was equal to half of the whole area. So we couldn’t go to where the wreckage was. »
Then, at the fateful dive, a structure finally appeared on the screen of a sonar. We put the Sabertooths in remote-controlled mode to approach it: it was indeed theEndurance. “It was a huge relief and a great pride, says Nicolas Vincent. It’s a magnificent team, which has worked non-stop, sometimes in extreme conditions, without ever giving up. Exactly in the spirit of Shackleton. »
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