legendary antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship “Endurance” It sank more than a century ago, and its wreckage was not discovered at the bottom of the Weddell Sea until March 2022.
Now, the team behind its discovery has teamed up with an Oscar-winning film crew to create a new National Geographic documentary that shows how the storied ship found its final resting place.
“Endurance” features thousands of 3D scans taken with 4K cameras placed at a depth of approximately 10,000 feet. The film premiered at the London Film Festival last weekend before being released in theaters, and was later released on Disney+.
The never-before-seen footage captures everything from flares and men’s boots to the crew’s utensils and identifiable parts of the ship.
Falklands Marine Heritage Trust / National Geographic
“We were really surprised,” Mensun Bound, head of exploration for the 2022 discovery team, told AFP. “I didn’t expect to see the most iconic part of the ship, the helm, just standing there upright.”
Historical broadcaster Dan Snow, executive producer of “Endurance,” said the discovery in such “amazing condition” was an “amazing achievement.”
“No one has ever discovered a wooden shipwreck 3,000 meters deep under the ice in one of the most remote places on Earth,” he said.
“This is important because it relates to the story of Shackleton and the 1914-1916 expedition, which is one of the greatest stories ever told. It’s a story of survival.”
According to a BBC report, the flares discovered were fired by Frank Hurley, the expedition’s cameraman, as the ship sank into the ice.
“Hurley took possession of this flare gun and used a huge detonator to fire it into the air as a tribute to the ship,” said expedition leader John Sears. “And in the diary he talked about putting it on deck. And here we are. We’re back over 100 years later, and there’s an incredible flare. there was.”
British-Irish explorer Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition was the first overland crossing of the frozen continent.
However, the three-masted wooden sailing ship Endurance fell victim to the treacherous Weddell Sea in January 1915, when it became entangled in an ice floe. The ship was gradually crushed and sank ten months later.
shackleton who died in 1922described the wreck site as “the worst part of the worst ocean in the world”.
Falklands Marine Heritage Trust / National Geographic
He led himself and 27 companions on an epic escape by foot across the ice and then by boat to South Georgia, a British overseas territory about 1,370 miles east of the Falkland Islands. , cementing his status as a legend in the exploration world.
Jimmy Chin, who co-directed and produced the new film with Elizabeth Chai Vasarheli, said: “I believe in all the great survival stories I’ve heard, but this one has so many people involved. It’s very good.”
The husband-and-wife team behind the Oscar-winning film Free Solo saw the expedition, organized by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust, as an opportunity to “tell the story to a new generation”.
“The ultimate polar challenge”
The documentary follows modern explorers using state-of-the-art submersibles to make dozens of futile deep-sea dives as the deadline approaches to depart before winter sets in, comparing the original mission to the 2022 The records of the missions are drawn alternately.
The film’s trailer shows footage from the original 1914 expedition combined with footage from the modern search.
Bound spoke at length about the various challenges faced by later teams, including technology, research and climate, one of which was reminiscent of that faced by Shackleton’s men.
“Ice, ice and ice,” he said, adding that the documentary clearly highlights the “brutality” of the conditions they faced.
“This is probably the most difficult project I’ve ever worked on…Wasn’t it called Unreachable Endurance for nothing?”
Mr Sears also said there were “real similarities” between the two endeavors and, like Mr Shackleton, he was drawn to the “ultimate polar challenge”.
“More people have been in space orbit than have walked on the sea ice where Endurance sank,” said Sears, who led the discovery of the wreck in 2019.
Chin and Vasarhelyi said it was difficult to combine the two stories, but they complemented each other.
“The two stories speak to each other, even though they are 110 years apart,” Vasarhelyi said.
“Both document the basic human condition of having the audacity to dream big…combining ambition with the hard work, determination, grit, and ingenuity to follow through.”
To tell an original story, they decided to use AI to record the diary of Shackleton and six crew members in their own voices, based on other recordings.
The filmmakers also used restored and colorized photographs and expedition footage shot by Frank Hurley.
But audiences will have to wait until the end of the documentary to see new footage of Endurance – a choice Vaserhelyi acknowledged was “terrible” and necessary.
“This was a great story with a big payoff, but you have to earn it, right?” she explained.
“What’s great is that this movie actually plays as this introduction…and it leads into this great moment.”
