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A century after Ernest Shackleton’s ship, the Endurance, sank in Antarctic waters, resulting in one of the greatest survival stories in exploration history, a team of modern adventurers, technicians and scientists set out to find the wreck.

With a crew of 46 and a reconnaissance crew of 64, a South African icebreaker will depart Cape Town on Saturday for the Weddell Sea. When the team gets there, they hope to find the wreckage and explore it with two underwater drones.

Getting there won’t be easy. Crushed by pack ice in 1915, the 144-foot-tall Endurance sits in 10,000 feet of water. And it’s not just any water: a swirling current at Weddell feeds a thick, nasty mass of sea ice that can rival even modern icebreakers.

Shackleton, whose plans to be the first to cross Antarctica were derailed by the loss of his ship, described the place where it sank:the worst part of the world’s worst sea”

“This is the most inaccessible wreck ever,” said Mensun Bound, marine archaeologist and director of expeditions. endurance22. “Which makes this the biggest wreck hunt of all time.”

Durability is also perhaps one of the most famous shipwrecks, on par with the Titanic. A relic of the heroic age of Antarctic exploration, when adventurers made detailed, risky and wildly popular expeditions to the continent and the poles. Some, like Roald Amundsen, have been successful. Others, like Robert Falcon Scott, died in the process.

Shackleton failed to achieve his goal, but was hailed as a hero when he returned to England after an epic openboat voyage on dangerous seas, rescuing his entire crew. It is still considered a lion today in books, movies, and even business school classes where the expedition is considered. a case study in effective leadership.

“I am as fascinated by Shackleton and Endurance as anyone else,” said Caroline Alexander, author and co-curator of a 1999 exhibition about the Endurance expedition at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The significance of the wreck, for example, is almost emotional rather than strictly historical, she said.

Funded at a cost of more than $10 million by an anonymous donor, the expedition to find it will take less than two weeks to locate the wreck once the icebreaker reaches the Weddell Sea. If Endurance is found, the drones will take photos and video and make precise laser scans of the debris. However, the site will not be disturbed because it has been announced. historical monument An international agreement in 1959 aimed at preserving the continent for peaceful purposes, under the terms of the Antarctic Treaty.

The wreck is expected to be in relatively good condition due to the absence of wood-eating organisms in cold water and Antarctic seas.

Thanks to the work of Endurance’s captain and sailor Frank Worsley, with basic navigational tools he was able to locate the ship at the time of sinking, the expedition team is confident the wreck was within a 7-mile radius. west Weddell.

“We pretty much know where we need to go,” said John Shears, leader of Endurance22, which made its 25th expedition to Antarctica. And so far this season (it was the Antarctic summer) satellite imagery shows the ice pack isn’t so bad. “We are very optimistic that we will ship through the wreckage area,” Mr. Shears said.

But, as Shackleton learned the hard way, a change in winds or a sudden drop in temperature can change things in a hurry. If the ice makes reaching the debris field impossible, the expedition has a daring Plan B. It involves using two helicopters to send equipment and technicians to a drifting ice floe, where they will drill a three-foot-wide hole and launch the submarines. there.

The expedition’s chief scientist, Lasse Rabenstein, and the other sea ice experts on board would have to choose a mass that could safely support the crew and equipment. But there’s another wrinkle, said Dr. Rabenstein Dr. Since it would take a few days to set up a camp in the fleet, it’s his and the others’ job to choose one, “so we’ll be on the wreckage in two days,” Rabenstein said. “And that’s a very sensitive question.”

An expedition three years ago failed when an obsolete submarine went missing before technicians could determine whether it had located the wreckage. The newer ones will be connected to the surface by a fiber optic cable capable of transmitting images and data in real time.

Built from solid woods powered by both steam and sail power in Norway, the Endurance is designed to withstand the extreme pressures of maneuvering on pack ice.

Shackleton set out with a crew of 27 for Vahsel Bay on the east bank of the Weddell Sea in late 1914. The plan was for Shackleton and a small group to travel across the vast Antarctic ice sheet to the South Pole, just as Amundsen first did in 1911, but then continue on to the Ross Sea on the other side of the continent.

They never got to the starting point. In early 1915, about 100 miles from the bay, Endurance got stuck in Weddell’s drifting ice floe. Shackleton and his crew watched for months as the ship suffered from the pressure of the ice that had built up around it. The crew eventually landed on the ice and emptied Endurance’s food and stores and nearly everything else, including three open lifeboats, before they sank in November.

The rest of the story is stuff of legend. The following April, when the ice broke up, all 28 men sailed in lifeboats to Elephant Island, little more than a rocky outcrop in the north of the Antarctic Peninsula. From there, Shackleton, Worsley, and four others, withstood the freezing weather and rough seas, sailed 800 miles in one of the 22-foot boats to the nearest inhabited island, South Georgia.

This was an outstanding sailing feat, followed soon after by an outstanding mountaineering feat, with Shackleton and the other two crossing the island’s peaks and glaciers to reach a whaling station on the opposite side. From there, he organized the rescue of the other men taken alive within months.

“There are many people who are familiar with the story,” said Donald Lamont, president of the Falklands Maritime Heritage Foundation, which organized the trip. “But also a lot of people around the world who never knew the story.” That’s why the expedition team includes digital media experts who will record the search via online streaming, and if the debris is found, images and data collected from the site could become the basis of museum exhibits.

“It’s a springboard into the human stories of the people who landed there,” Mr. Lamont said. (A former governor of the Falkland Islands won’t be on board. “I’m sitting so happily in the warmth and comfort of England and saying ‘Goodbye and good luck’.”)

Even if no debris was found, the discovery will help scientists better understand the ice in the Weddell Sea and how it changes as the planet warms due to greenhouse gas emissions.

Among the scientists on board will be Stefanie Arndt, a sea ice researcher from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany. Dr. Arndt, mosaic scientific discovery 2019-20 when an icebreaker drifted along with ice across the Arctic Ocean. But his specialty is actually Antarctic ice, so he jumped at the chance to participate in it.

Dr. Arndt will take samples and examine the characteristics of sea ice that is partially affected by snow falling on it. Unlike Arctic sea ice, which has declined seasonally for decades as the world warms, the amount of sea ice around Antarctica has remained relatively constant. Dr. Arndt will look for signs of possible long-term changes starting.

But he’s also looking forward to seeking out Endurance. “This is a really big thing,” he said. “And it’s really special to me. The first book I read about Antarctica was about Shackleton’s expedition. It was the beginning of polar science for me.”