This story is a collaboration with Biography.com.
Earlier this month, the Royal Canadian Geographical Society discovered a historic shipwreck in the North West Atlantic. The expedition used sonar technology to locate the wreckage of the vessel Quest, which sank off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador on May 5, 1962.
In a press release, RCGS Search Director David Mearns said the discovery was the result of “painstaking work.” The team, which included oceanographers, historians, and divers from Canada, Norway, the U.S. and the U.K., “researched historic logs and maps, and cross referenced the historical data with modern technology to determine where the ship may have been located based on currents, weather conditions and other factors.”
But the Quest isn’t historically significant because it sank during a Norwegian seal-hunting expedition in 1962. Instead, it’s due to an event that happened aboard the vessel 40 years earlier. On January 5, 1922, while on a mission to circumnavigate the Antarctic, Sir Ernest Shackleton took his final breath on the Quest.
“Finding Quest is one of the final chapters in the extraordinary story of Sir Ernest Shackleton,” noted Expedition Leader John Geiger, CEO of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, said in the press release. “Shackleton was known for his courage and brilliance as a leader in crisis. The tragic irony is that his was the only death to take place on any of the ships under his direct command.”
The fact that no men died under Shackleton’s command is all the more remarkable given the fate that befell the crew of his prior ship, the Endurance, whose own wreckage was found in the Weddell Sea just two years ago. The story of the Endurance stands as one of the most incredible survival narratives in the history of naval exploration.
At the age of 27, Ernest H. Shackleton joined the 1901 Discovery expedition to the South Pole with explorer Robert Falcon Scott and scientist Edward Adrian Wilson. The journey, which lasted until 1904, brought them closer to the South Pole than anyone before, reaching latitude 82°S and igniting Shackleton’s lifelong passion for polar exploration.
In 1907, Shackleton led the Nimrod expedition, breaking previous records by reaching latitude 88°23′ S, just 97.5 nautical miles from the South Pole. The crew didn’t make it any farther due to brutal weather conditions.
In 1911, Shackleton’s goal to be the first person to reach the South Pole was “shattered when Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen reached the earth’s most southerly point,” according to Biography. Instead, Shackleton pivoted to a new challenge: “crossing Antarctica via the South Pole.”
On August 1, 1914, Shackleton embarked on his third South Pole expedition, this time aboard the ship Endurance, with 27 other crewmen, 69 sled dogs, and a cat named Mrs. Chippy. By the fall, the ship had sailed from London to South Georgia, an island in the southern Atlantic. The Endurance set off again on December 5—“the last time Shackleton and his men would touch land for an astonishing 497 days.”
In January 1915, the Endurance was trapped in ice, and the crew set up camp on the frozen surface. While they tried to stay positive at first, the harsh reality of the conditions eventually crept in.
The Endurance sank in late 1915, and Shackleton started making some tough decisions in order for his crew to survive. In a October 29, 1915 diary entry, Shackleton regretfully recorded one of the only losses of life the stranded crew had to endure:
“This afternoon Sallie's three youngest pups, Sue's Sirius, and Mrs. Chippy, the carpenter's cat, have to be shot. We could not undertake the maintenance of weaklings under the new conditions. Macklin, Crean, and the carpenter seemed to feel the loss of their friends rather badly.”
By April 1916, Shackleton decided it was time to escape. He and his crew piled into three small boats and set out, enduring a difficult week at sea before reaching Elephant Island, off the southern tip of Cape Horn. There, Shackleton and five men embarked on another journey in a lifeboat to find help. After 16 days at sea, they arrived in South Georgia, where Shackleton went to a whaling station to find help.
On August 25, 1916, Shackleton returned to Elephant Island to rescue the remaining crew members. Remarkably, after two years of hardship, all 28 men who had set out on the Endurance survived.
Five years later, Shackleton took to the seas—yes, again!—aboard the Quest, with the goal of circumnavigating the South Pole. Unfortunately, Shackleton died of a heart attack on January 15, 1922, and was buried in South Georgia. The Quest was transferred to Norwegian ownership and served as both an exploration vessel and a sealing ship before it sank 40 years later.
Shackleton’s legacy endured in the century that followed. Two different Royal Naval vessels went on to bear the name Endurance. Shackleton’s second-in-command, Frank Wild, had both a cape and mountain named for him in the Antarctic. And even the late Mrs. Chippy was commemorated in 2004, with a statue built in his honor atop the grave of crew member Harry “Chippy” McNish.
In a special twist, Shackleton’s granddaughter, Hon. Alexandra Shackleton, was a co-patron of the expedition that found the Quest earlier this month. “I have long hoped for this day,” Alexandra Shackleton said of the discovery of the Quest, “…and am grateful to those who made this incredible discovery.”
And according to CNN, the discovery of Shackleton’s final ship is not, in fact, the end for these explorers. They’re planning a second expedition later this year with remotely operated vehicles in tow.
“We’ll be very excited for the second phase of the expedition,” Mearns told a news conference, “...which is to actually photograph and visually document the shipwreck and the artifacts.”
Once that’s completed, researchers will know even more about one of history’s most celebrated explorers and survivors.
Michael Natale is the news editor for Best Products, covering a wide range of topics like gifting, lifestyle, pop culture, and more. He has covered pop culture and commerce professionally for over a decade. His past journalistic writing can be found on sites such as Yahoo! and Comic Book Resources, his podcast appearances can be found wherever you get your podcasts, and his fiction can’t be found anywhere, because it’s not particularly good.
