William Brangham:
She hasn't been seen in over 100 years. This is the Endurance, resting nearly 10,000 feet down in the dark, freezing waters at the bottom of Antarctica's Weddell Sea, just a few sea anemones and other creatures bearing witness to perhaps the final chapter in one of the world's great stories of heroism and survival.
This was Endurance back in January of 1915, a sturdy, three-masted ship that had carried British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton and his crew of 27 to the coast of Antarctica. Shackleton's plan was to land and then cross the entire continent, which would have been a first.
But the Endurance got stuck off the coast, trapped by the massive halo of sea ice that grows around Antarctica every year. The ice seized the ship, and, despite the crews best efforts, never let her go. Shackleton and his men were stranded, forced to live on the drifting ice with their ship for nearly 10 months, their heroic expedition plans ruined.
After carrying them many miles along the coast, that churning ice crushed the Endurance, and she sank to the bottom of the sea. What makes this story so legendary is the extraordinary journey that Shackleton and his men then had to do over unmapped mountains, and across hundreds of miles of open ocean in small lifeboats to get out.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7sa7SZ6arn1%2Bjsri%2Fx6isq2ejnby4e9KhmJyjnJrBsLrSZpynnKWnrq%2BvxGaboquTpMOmvsSdZJqepJq%2FbrnOq5xmrJiWu259j2lksp2Rp8BurdNmq6GdXZe8tcDOpmSonl2ptaZ50p6Y