The search came to an end on March 5th.

In February of that year, the Agulhas II set sail from Cape Town carrying a research party on board in search of the remains of the Endurance, which sank in the Southern Ocean in November 1915.

An expedition that started in 2019 with the same goal was unsuccessful, the "Endurance 22" team was luckier.

At a depth of 3008 meters, the diving robot encountered the wreck and sent up breathtaking images: The ship is upright and mostly free, it has apparently suffered hardly any damage, not even from the organisms that populate it.

Even the "Endurance" lettering on the stern of the wreck is still clearly visible.

Tilman Spreckelsen

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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The fact that this ship became world famous after its sinking is due to the crew who, under the command of Ernest Shackleton, left the ice-frozen vessel under the command of Ernest Shackleton in October 1915 after it had completed a giant three-quarters circle in the Weddell Sea.

Thanks to its massive construction, the Endurance, launched in Norway just five years earlier, was able to withstand the pressure of the ice long enough for the entire crew to disembark in an orderly manner and set themselves up on a large ice floe with equipment and supplies.

But then the ship sank in front of the eyes of the crew.

"She's gone," Shackleton reportedly said.

The fact that the commander of the Endurance expedition, who was born in Kilkea, Ireland in 1874, had lost a talented author, could be seen in recent years in a reprint of the "South Polar Times", the periodical that appeared on two British Antarctic ships at the beginning of the twentieth century. Expeditions was born and its first editor was Shackleton.

The newspaper in the minimum edition of exactly one copy was written between 1902 and 1912 by the expedition members in words and pictures and served not only to entertain the public but also to keep the crew busy.

Anyone who was interested was invited to collaborate, wrote verses, drew the barren surroundings or got lost in reminiscences of the comparatively lush homeland.

Shackleton knew

how important such a diversion was in the face of constant double-digit minus temperatures and polar storms.

In his first editorial, written at the beginning of the Antarctic winter of 1902, he stated the purpose of the newspaper and thus basically also of all other activities of the expedition members: Now that after the sun had gone down there was no longer any light to be expected from outside, one had to just provide a light from within.

In 1915, Shackleton's prodigious talent for motivating a group to persevere even in desperate circumstances made it possible for the men camping on the ice to endure the hardships of the following months, including some wintering under the cover of an overturned lifeboat on the remote island Elephant Island and for the other a trip of well over a thousand kilometers on one of the lifeboats to South Georgia.

The story of the Endurance expedition has been told many times since Shackleton was alive - he died in 1922 and was buried just a hundred years before his ship was found.

It is unclear what contribution the discovery of the wreck will make to this.

In recent years, for example, the ships of John Franklin's expedition in the Canadian Arctic Ocean have been discovered, in much worse condition, but also at much shallower depths.

Artifacts that could be discovered and salvaged there have already been shown at exhibitions.

And given the mystery that still surrounds Franklin's expedition, which no one survived, these finds may be far more illuminating than what might have been left behind on the Endurance.

Especially since according to international law nothing can be salvaged there,

All the more impressive is the success of the members of "Endurance 22", who, using the latest position determinations by Shackleton's crew and calculations about the ocean currents, found the wreck in a place that is almost completely covered by ice - and brought back photos of the sunken Endurance, which one had not thought possible.