The wreck of the steam-yacht Endurance, which sank in 1915 during an expedition by the polar explorer Ernest Shackleton, has been rediscovered.
The wreck was found at a depth of 3,008 meters beneath the Weddell Sea, according to the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust.
The captain of the ship used a sextant to record the position of the sinking after several months of being surrounded and eventually crushed by ice.
Retouched photos of the 1914 expedition.
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The director of the search expedition said in a statement that they were overwhelmed by their good fortune in having located and captured images of Endurance.
The ship was crushed by the sea ice in its final weeks, which tipped it over, and caused its timbers to groan and crack, as well as causing it to have a stove in the stern.
Despite its trials, the wreck of the Endurance seems well-preserved.
Bound said that it was the finest wooden wreck he had ever seen. You can see the name on the stern.
The first and second images are image 1 and image 2.
Image 1 of 2
Image 2 of 2
The rediscovery is the culmination of years of searching for the wreck of the Endurance, which became famous partly because of the dramatic photographs of its sinking and the amazing journey of survival that followed.
The wreck is only a few hundred miles away from the coast of Antarctica, and the region is often covered with sea ice, which has forced previous search efforts to turn back.
There are photos of the search for the Endurance shipwreck.
The wreck of Ernest Shackleton was located on Saturday by a team on the South African polar research vessel.
John Shears, the leader of the search expedition, said that they had successfully completed the world's most difficult shipwreck search.
3 of 3 are images
The wreck of the Endurance was found by a hybrid underwater vehicle. On the latest search, the robotic vehicles were able to operate autonomously and on a tether.
The wreck was spotted after more than two weeks of searching, based on the original sextant fixes.
The wreck is protected as a historic site and monument under the treaty and will not be disturbed while it is being surveyed.
The search expedition has been lucky with the weather in the sea. The lowest amount of sea-ice recorded during the satellite era was last month.
On his third expedition, he used Endurance.
He had visited the frozen southern continent twice before, in 1901 and 1903, as a sub of Robert Falcon Scott, and then in 1907 and 1909, as a passenger on the first hot-air balloon flight to reach the South Pole.
The first team to reach the South Pole was led by the Norwegian explorer Amundsen, who was a few weeks ahead of the team led by Scott.
The first complete crossing of theAntarctic continent by dog-sled from the South Pole to Ross Island in the Ross Sea was to be completed in 1915.
The overland expedition was supposed to take Shackleton and his team to the southern coast of the Weddell Sea. The crew abandoned the ship in October 1915 after it became trapped in heavy sea ice.
After the Endurance sank, Shackleton and the other 27 members of his crew attempted to reach land by dogsled and eventually were rescued from the ship.
In April 1915, they reached Elephant Island at the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, and then set out in one of the lifeboats for a whaling station on the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia.
All of the 28 crew members of the rescue ship survived the voyage back to Elephant Island.
It was originally published on Live Science.
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