A New 3D Scan, Created from 25,000 High-Resolution Images, Reveals the Remarkably Well-Preserved Wreck of Shackleton’s Endurance

Pho­tos on this page cour­tesy of the Falk­lands Mar­itime Her­itage 

Few who hear the sto­ry of the Endurance could avoid reflect­ing on the apt­ness of the ship’s name. A year after set­ting out on the Impe­r­i­al Trans-Antarc­tic Expe­di­tion in 1914, it got stuck in a mass of drift­ing ice off Antarc­ti­ca. There it remained for ten months, while leader Sir Ernest Shack­le­ton and his crew of 27 men wait­ed for a thaw. But the Endurance was being slow­ly crushed, and even­tu­al­ly had to be left to its watery grave. What secures its place in the his­to­ry books is the sub-expe­di­tion made by Shack­le­ton and five oth­ers in search of help, which ensured the res­cue of every sin­gle man who’d been on the ship.

This har­row­ing jour­ney has, of course, inspired doc­u­men­taries, includ­ing this year’s Endurance from Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, which debuted at the Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val last month and will come avail­able to stream on Dis­ney+ lat­er this fall. “The doc­u­men­tary incor­po­rates footage and pho­tos cap­tured dur­ing the expe­di­tion by Aus­tralian pho­tog­ra­ph­er Frank Hur­ley, who [in 1914] brought sev­er­al cam­eras along for the jour­ney,” writes Smithsonian.com’s Sarah Kuta. “Film­mak­ers have col­or-treat­ed Hurley’s black-and-white images and footage for the first time. They also used arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to recre­ate crew mem­bers’ voic­es to ‘read’ their own diary entries.”

The fruits of an even more tech­no­log­i­cal­ly impres­sive project have been released along with Endurance: a 3D dig­i­tal mod­el “cre­at­ed from more than 25,000 high-res­o­lu­tion images cap­tured after the icon­ic ves­sel was dis­cov­ered in March 2022.”

As we not­ed at the time here on Open Cul­ture, the ship was found to be in remark­ably good con­di­tion after well over a cen­tu­ry spent two miles beneath the Wed­dell Sea. “Endurance looks much like it did when it sank on Novem­ber 21, 1915. Every­day items used by the crew — includ­ing din­ing plates, a boot and a flare gun — are still eas­i­ly rec­og­niz­able among the pro­tect­ed wreck­age.”

Endurance has, in oth­er words, endured. Its intact­ness — which “makes it look as though the ship,” writes CNN.com’s Jack Guy, “has been mirac­u­lous­ly lift­ed out of the Wed­dell Sea onto dry land in one piece” — is, in its way, as improb­a­ble and impres­sive as Shack­le­ton and com­pa­ny’s sur­vival of its fate­ful first expe­di­tion. The degree of detail cap­tured by this new scan (not tech­no­log­i­cal­ly fea­si­ble back at the time of the last acclaimed doc­u­men­tary on this sub­ject), should make pos­si­ble fur­ther, even deep­er research into the sto­ry of the Endurance. But one ques­tion will remain unan­swer­able: would that sto­ry have res­onat­ed quite as long had the ship kept its orig­i­nal name, Polaris?

via Smithsonian.com

Relat­ed con­tent:

The First Full 3D Scan of the Titan­ic, Made of More Than 700,000 Images Cap­tur­ing the Wreck’s Every Detail

How an Ancient Roman Ship­wreck Could Explain the Uni­verse

See the Well-Pre­served Wreck­age of Ernest Shackleton’s Ship Endurance Found in Antarc­ti­ca

Hear Ernest Shack­le­ton Speak About His Antarc­tic Expe­di­tion in a Rare 1909 Record­ing

New­ly Dis­cov­ered Ship­wreck Proves Herodotus, the “Father of His­to­ry,” Cor­rect 2500 Years Lat­er

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.


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Comments (11)
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  • Carol Taylor Culver says:

    Is there a good book out on this? Is there a film or video, a doc­u­men­tary. I am inter­est­ed in any stud­ies, research, doc­u­men­ta­tion on the Endurance. Before my Dad­dy passed, we always spent time togeth­er watch­ing all the episodes of Jacque Cousteau. We ordered the 12 vol­ume ency­clo­pe­dias (hard back) to read and share sto­ries, details. The com­pre­hen­sion lev­els were just enough to keep thoughts and details sep­a­rat­ed and in order of dis­cov­ery. Very good work. I thank you so much. The Endurance has sparked my moti­va­tion and inter­est in our vast ocean…just like the old days. I am ready to dive in.

  • Kate says:

    A new doc­u­men­tary has just come out on Dis­ney+.
    Books I can rec­om­mend, hav­ing read, are ‘Shack­le­ton’s Boat Jour­ney’, writ­ten by kiwi Frank Wors­ley, he was the nav­i­ga­tor on the jour­ney with Shack­le­ton. He also wrote ‘Endurance’. Shack­le­ton him­self wrote ‘South’. And if you’re inter­est­ed in oth­er polar expe­di­tions, I can high­ly rec­om­mend Aps­ley Cher­ry Gar­rard’s ‘The Worst Jour­ney in the World’. Also ‘The South Polar Times’, a col­lec­tion of home made news­pa­pers made by Robert Fal­con Scotts crew when they were down there.

  • Sue says:

    Sev­er­al great books on Shack­le­ton voy­age and the endurance! rec­om­mend them . Also the Essex or heart of the sea

  • Raymond Pfeil says:

    Oh my God
    If you were a sur­viv­ing mem­ber off the crew to see your home again, what an emo­tion­al moment But for us that sit in our warm liv­ing rooms with mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy it’s almost impos­si­ble to feel the deep dis­par and fear they went though, God bless their Soles and may there efforts not be for­got­ten

  • Don says:

    Yeah that’s nice.

  • Don says:

    Yeah that’s a nice thing. Gawwwwwd!

  • Pdxlx 2ll23t says:

    8mi3M ‚v2 l ss

  • Traleana Woolcock says:

    I own sev­er­al books about the Endurance. My late father was also a fan of his­to­ry and all things to do with tall ships. He was fas­ci­nat­ed by this sto­ry. I inher­it­ed the col­lec­tion from him.

  • Patrick O'Shea says:

    There is a grip­ping account of the fate of the Endurance in the book “An Unsung Hero, Tom Cre­an — Antarc­tic Sur­vivor” by Michael Smith.

  • Lynda Hasert says:

    I have just watched Endurance on the Dis­ney Chan­nel. Grip­ping!!

  • Jase says:

    Incred­i­ble!
    If Titan­ic has been done, now Endurance..
    Would images of Bis­mar­ck be far off?
    The world won­ders..

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