Happy Nice Mall

Perhaps the most famous shipwreck in Mensun Bound’s long career as a marine archaeologist discoveredHe was watching some penguins from a mile away.

It was the afternoon of March 5th. Mr. Bound was traveling on an icebreaker in the Weddell Sea in Antarctica with the Endurance22 expedition, which was looking for the age-old remains of Ernest Shackleton’s ship, the Endurance.

Technicians operated a submarine drone day and night for two weeks, scanning the seafloor with sonar in search of the 144-foot-long wooden ship that was crushed by Weddell’s dangerous ice floe and sank in 1915 during Shackleton’s ill-fated attempt. The first to cross Antarctica.

So far there was no sign of Endurance under the icy waters, and the icebreaker was only four days away from returning to port in Cape Town. Bound, exploration director and expedition leader John Shears, who previously described Endurance as “the most inaccessible wreck ever” due to its location in one of the world’s most remote and icy seas, needed a break.

“We were just talking about how we should get off the ship to stretch our legs,” Mr. Bound said. later in an interview with Reach the World, a nonprofit educational group that produces onboard streaming videos for classrooms. “And we decided that day is today.”

At 4 pm they walked towards an iceberg embedded in the ice pack about a mile away. The views were breathtaking and there were even a few Adélie penguins nearby to accompany them.

Back on the ship, they were called to the bridge when they encountered Nicolas Vincent, who was leading the underwater elements of the expedition. In the interview, Mr. Bound recalled picking up his phone so they could see a photo on it. “And he said, ‘Gentlemen, I want to introduce you to Endurance.'”

“It was her first good photograph,” said Mr. Bound. “I mean, it was incredible.”

As she and Mr. Shears disembarked, the drone sent some interesting sonar images. Contrary to some previous false alarms, upon closer inspection it was clear that these belonged to a ship standing more or less upright on the seafloor. It could just be Stamina.

The image on Mr. Vincent’s phone was the first photo of the ship since the famous photos taken by Shackleton’s photographer Frank Hurley as the Endurance was wrecked by ice.

four days later discovery announced It is announced to the world with the publication of a few photos and a short video. Once Shackleton and all 27 of his men had reached safety, the Endurance, whose sinking led to one of the greatest stories of leadership and survival in the history of exploration, was in relatively pristine condition, its name still inscribed on the stern, the glass still intact on the portholes. The caulk is still visible between the timbers of the hull.

Mr Bound, whose archaeological credits include the excavation of a 2,600-year-old Etruscan ship in Italy, described the Endurance remains as “the best wooden wreck I’ve ever seen”.

Expedition funded by more than $10 million from an anonymous donor, He left South Africa in early February with the icebreaker Agulhas II. Endurance reached the 150-square-mile search area on February 16, selected based on its last known location as determined by Shackleton captain and sailor Frank Worsley.

A reconnaissance expedition three years earlier had failed as technicians lost contact with the submarine drone and could not be recovered.

This time around, the expedition had two new drones, one primary and one backup, which are flat torpedo-like pieces of equipment about 13 feet long and 5 feet wide with thrusters that allow them to move in all directions.

Like the previous expedition, these drones can operate independently, pre-programmed with coordinates and a search pattern. But unlike previous equipment, these were attached to the ship by a thin, mile-long fiber optic cable that could be unwrapped as the drone traveled to the seafloor. The cable transmitted images to the ship in real time, but can also be used to send new instructions to the drone to change its course if necessary.

Chad Bonin, who oversees the drones’ operation, said in the same interview that Shackleton and his crew’s primary drone for Elephant Island, where Endurance sailed to safety for the first time after sinking, had made about 30 dives by March 5. .

Mr Bonin said there were some early setbacks. The fiber optic cable broke during a dive and had to be reattached. Cold water and high pressure 10,000 feet down caused problems with one of the thrusters. There were also problems with the winch used to lift the drone, which weighs more than 3,000 pounds, into the water.

Mr. Bonin told Reach the World: “Once I fixed the kinks and everything else, everything was great. “From that point on it was dive after dive.” Each dive lasted between four and eight hours, and the drone had to recharge its batteries. There were a few hours.

The drone carried radar equipment on either side of it that scanned a one-mile-wide area of ​​the seafloor as it traveled approximately 225 feet above. Mr. Bonin and others watched the footage from computer screens in a cramped operations center in the ship’s hold.

“The seabed in the Weddell Sea is pretty flat,” he said. “So anything out of the ordinary comes up like a red flag.”

Over the course of two weeks, the team saw some interesting things, but upon closer inspection all the images turned out to be either natural features or not Endurance.

Even as the deadline to exit the search site approached, Mr. Bonin remained optimistic.

“I would walk on deck every day and say, ‘Today is the day,’” she recalled.

When he first saw the image on March 5, he was excited but cautious. “My first reaction – Hah! We found it. But we need to verify.” It didn’t take long to be convinced.

The drone returned to the ship, and technicians replaced the sonar equipment with a high-resolution camera and a laser measuring device and made extremely detailed scans of the site.

Mr. Bound expected the wreckage to be well preserved, due to the absence of parasitic worms that consume cold water and wood and damage shipwrecks elsewhere.

Combined with the clarity of the water, the camera of the drone revealed remarkable details. At one point a crew’s boat was seen. Elsewhere, footage clearly showed that some of the ship’s timber had been cut for use on the ice. The camera even managed to peek inside some cabins from the portholes.

Images and scans will be used for educational materials and exhibits.

“We came, we saw, we measured in detail,” said Mr Bound. They then left untouched as the wreckage was protected under the 60-year Antarctic Treaty.

Before leaving the Weddell Sea, the expedition and the ship’s crew celebrated by throwing a party on the ice by setting up a large tent with food, drink and music.

The Icebreaker is now on its way to Cape Town and is expected to be there in about a week.

On Friday, the ship stopped at Grytviken, a former whaling station on the island of South Georgia. Shackleton and five of his crew arrived on the island in May 1916, after a 16-day, 800-mile voyage across the Southern Ocean in an open lifeboat.

After arranging the rescue of the remaining crew from Elephant Island, Shackleton was given a heroic welcome to England. He then embarked on another Antarctic expedition and returned to South Georgia, where he died of a heart attack in 1921 at the age of 47.

He was buried there, and members of the expedition visited his tomb, leaving new images of his ship on his granite tombstone.

Stefanie Arndt, a scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, who was aboard and who studies how the Weddell Sea ice may change as the world warms, said: He described the visit on Twitter..

Dr. “Yesterday we concluded this historic expedition with a visit to South Georgia,” Arndt said. “We visited Sir Ernest Shackleton’s grave here and brought his ship back to him with pictures.

“An emotional end to a long story.”