In 1915, the intrepid British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton and his crew were blocked for months in Antarctica after their ship, Endurancewas trapped by package ice, finally flowing into the freezed -free freezing depths. Miraculously, the whole crew survived. The dominant popular story surrounding the famous journey has two key hypotheses: that Endurance was the strongest polar ship of its time, and that the ship finally sank after the ice snatched the rudder.
However, a new analysis reveals that Endurance would have flowed even with an intact rudder; He was crushed by the cumulative compressive forces of antarctic ice without the cause of shipwreck. In addition, the ship was not designed to withstand these forces, and Shackleton was probably well aware of this, according to a new article published in the review Polar Record. However, he still chose to embark on the risky trip.
The author Jukka Tuhkuri of Aalto University is a polar explorer and one of the main researchers on ice in the world. He was one of the scientists of the Endurance22 mission who discovered the Endurance Shipwreck in 2022, documented in a national documentary Geographic 2024. The ship was in perfect condition in part because of the lack of wooden eating microbes in these waters. In fact, the director of exploration of the Endurance22 expedition, Mensun Bound, told New York Times at the time that the sinking was the best example he ever saw; Endurance was “in a brilliant state of conservation”.
As indicated previously, Endurance Follow Plymouth on August 6, 1914, Shackleton joining his crew in Buenos Aires, Argentina. As they reached the Weddell Sea in January 1915, the accumulation of pack ice and strong winds of wind slowed down the progress towards a ramp. Endurance became completely returned to ice on January 24 and in mid-February, Shackleton ordered to stop the boilers so that the ship drifts with the ice until the time warmed up enough for the pack to break. It would be a long wait. For 10 months, the crew endured the freezing conditions. In August, ice floes rushed into the ship with a force such that the bridges of the ship are completed.
