In the chilly depths off the coast of Labrador, Canada, a slice of history surfaced when an international team discovered the long-lost wreck of the ship of Sir Ernest Shackleton, an Irish-born British explorer renowned for his daring expeditions to Antarctica. Located 62 years after it disappeared, the last vestige of Shackleton’s maritime heritage was found by a group spearheaded by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.
The ship named “Quest” was located on Sunday evening, nestled on its keel beneath 1,280 feet of icy, turbulent waters, revealed through a series of sonar scans. The once towering mast of the ship now lies cracked and broken nearby, a testimony to its violent descent to the oceanic depths after a fateful encounter with an iceberg on the 5th of May, 1962.
John Geiger, leader of the Shackleton Quest Expedition and CEO of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, imparted his exhilaration at this significant find during a seminar at the Memorial University’s Marine Institute in St. John’s, Newfoundland. He dismissed rumors of wealthy Americans seeking the ship, expressing his visionary picture evoking a band of billionaires on yachts prowling the Labrador Sea.
Geiger emphasized the ethos of their mission, stating, “We’ve done it the right way. It’s not about anyone’s ego, it’s about telling great stories and celebrating some of the finest human attributes.” He stressed the landmark significance of the Quest, recognizing the end of the “heroic age” of Antarctic exploration which was marked by Shackleton’s death onboard the ship in 1922, at the early age of 47.
The Quest, originally a Norwegian sealing vessel, was transformed into a steamship by Shackleton with aspirations of voyaging to Canada’s High Arctic. However, these plans were scrapped by the Canadian government of the time, prompting Shackleton to steer his vessel towards an alternate destination – the Antarctic.
Despite this detour, death caught up with Shackleton just off South Georgia, a remote locale east of the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic. Post Shackleton’s demise, the Quest’s career didn’t falter, as it was employed for Arctic research before returning to its initial role as a sealing vessel. Tragically, it met its end in 1962, damaged by ice in the Labrador Sea during a whaling expedition.
“The vessel appears to be in an incredible condition,” stated Geiger, despite observable damage from its plunge into the seabed. Given the prohibitive costs of recovery, the Quest will remain immobile in its watery grave. However, it will be extensively documented and examined, with a crew set to journey to the site before summer’s end equipped with remotely operated vehicles to capture imagery of the vessel.
A surreal coincidence marked the year 2022, when another of Shackleton’s ships, the Endurance, was found encased in nearly 3,000 meters of icy water, a hundred years after it vanished into the Antarctic ice. A blend of marine archaeologists, engineers, and scientists transcended the icy barriers of the Weddell Sea, near the Antarctica Peninsula, employing an icebreaker ship and underwater drones to locate the wreck.
Shackleton’s dream of being the first person to traverse Antarctica via the South Pole may have remained unfulfilled, but his legacy is etched in the annals of fearless exploration. Even as the failed Endurance expedition prevented him from setting foot on the continent, his daring spirit continues to inspire new generations of adventurers.
