On October 27, 1915, after enduring nine harrowing months trapped and slowly crushed by dense ice in the Weddell Sea off Antarctica, Sir Ernest Shackleton and his resilient crew made the difficult decision to abandon their ship, the Endurance. Their ambitious dream of traversing the frozen continent by land was over. The ill-fated vessel continued to drift with the ice for another three weeks before finally succumbing to the deep.
For more than a hundred years, the prevailing belief among experts was that the Endurance met its tragic end due to an overpowering ice floe that damaged its rudder and tore a massive gash in its hull. However, a new study challenges this long-held theory. Published recently in the journal Polar Record, it suggests that the ship itself, rather than the ice, was the primary cause of its demise. The research posits that the Endurance was fundamentally ill-suited for its formidable mission, a critical flaw that Shackleton reportedly aware of long before setting sail for Antarctica.
Jukka Tuhkuri, a distinguished ice researcher and naval architect, and the author of this groundbreaking study, was a member of the Endurance22 expedition that successfully located the wreck in 2022. As a fascinating side project, he meticulously analyzed historical diaries, private letters, and the physical remains of the ship to uncover the true reasons behind the Endurance‘s sinking.
A year and a half into his independent investigation, Tuhkuri found himself poring over archival images held by the Royal Geological Society in London. These were pictures of a vessel once hailed as the strongest wooden ship ever constructed. It was then that a new hypothesis began to form.
“It’s not the ice; it’s the ship itself,” Dr. Tuhkuri declared.
He observed that the Endurance‘s hull was critically missing vital beams that would have provided the necessary structural integrity to withstand the relentless assault of crushing ice. This fundamental design flaw led to the catastrophic tearing apart of the rudder, stern post, and a portion of the keel, quickly dooming the ship as it rapidly filled with water.
While Shackleton famously attributed his ship’s demise to “insurmountable ice floes” in his book South: A Memoir of the Endurance Voyage, this new study subtly implies he might have known better. In a private correspondence to his wife, Emily Shackleton, he candidly wrote that “this ship is not as strong as the Nimrod constructionally,” a direct comparison to the wooden vessel he commanded on his 1908 Antarctic expedition.
Walter Ansel, the senior shipwright at Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, Connecticut, who was not involved in this particular study, noted that the Endurance was originally built as a touring vessel for Arctic hunting. Its design was intended for “working at the edge of the pack ice, but not for being frozen within it.”
Remarkably, not only was Shackleton seemingly aware of the Endurance‘s structural flaws, but he also possessed the knowledge to rectify them. He had previously assisted German polar explorer Wilhelm Filchner in reinforcing his ship, the Deutschland, with the very same type of structural beams that the Endurance so desperately needed. Later, in 1912, the Deutschland successfully drifted through the heavily ice-packed Antarctic waters for eight months, emerging unscathed.
The new research meticulously details five significant ice compression events documented in the crew members’ diaries, culminating in a catastrophic incident on October 17. Reginald James, a crew member, recorded that “the pressure was mostly along the region of the engine room where there are no beams of any strength.” Echoing this sentiment, Captain Frank Worsley famously described the engine room as “the weakest part of the ship.” These entries, both from October 17, paint a vivid picture of a vessel being utterly overwhelmed by ice due to its inherent structural weaknesses.
Historically, the American whaling fleet encountered numerous similar disasters. In 1876 alone, twelve ships, which lacked sufficient reinforcement, were tragically lost to compressive ice near Alaska, as noted by Mr. Ansel.
Professor Michael Bravo of the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, though not part of this specific study, concurred that many polar exploration ships of that era were often ill-suited for their challenging voyages. Suitable vessels were rarely purpose-built or readily accessible. “Most of them were acquired second-hand and modified as budget and time allowed,” Dr. Bravo explained.
This scenario likely held true for the Endurance, a point also raised by Michael Smith, author of Shackleton: By Endurance We Conquer, who was not involved in the current research. Smith suggests Shackleton might have been fully aware that his ship was less than ideal for the expedition. However, the explorer was reportedly restless, burdened by significant financial debt, and navigating a troubled marriage.
“The sheer scale of this expedition was incredibly daunting, but he desperately needed a challenge and a reason to escape,” Mr. Smith stated, further emphasizing that Shackleton was also driven by intense competition with other explorers vying to conquer Antarctica.
Despite these new revelations, Mr. Smith believes this discovery is unlikely to fundamentally alter our perception of Shackleton. Historians already recognize him as a leader who consistently embraced risks and made monumental decisions in dire circumstances. The inherent perils of these ambitious polar missions were, after all, well understood by the explorers themselves.
“To embark on a polar expedition a century ago was, in itself, an extraordinary act of faith,” Mr. Smith concluded.