The Endurance, the ship that carried Ernest Shackleton on his ill-fated attempt to cross Antarctica in 1915, produced one of the greatest survival stories in the history of exploration and now occupies a revered place in polar history.
The discovery of its wreckage at the bottom of the Weddell Sea in 2022 has put Shackleton back in the spotlight and rekindled interest in finding the little-known ship, the Quest, which was on its way back to Antarctica when Shackleton suffered a heart attack and died in 1922. The Quest continued to sail for another 40 years, sinking in 1962 during a sealing voyage off the Atlantic coast of Canada.
On June 9, John Geiger, leader of the Quest expedition, spotted an unusual shape on the sonar screen of a research vessel sailing off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador. Geiger realized almost immediately that the final discovery of one of history's most revered explorers had been made.
“This is Shackleton's last big thing,” the explorer's granddaughter, Alexandra Shackleton, said in an interview about the discovery of the Quest. “It couldn't have been anything more significant.”
The expedition to find the Quest is being led by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, an educational charity where Geiger serves as chief executive, and has cost 500,000 Canadian dollars (about $365,000), according to a spokesman for the society. Martin Brooks, a Shackleton expert and chief executive of Shackleton, an outdoor equipment company that offers tours to relive the explorer's journey, said the Quest is the last missing relic of “the heroic age of Arctic exploration.”
But finding the Quest wasn't easy for the 23 sailors who took part in the expedition. After setting off from St. John's on June 5, the crew battled dangerous conditions, including heavy fog and faulty equipment. They spent 17 hours combing the ocean floor with a sonar system before finally finding the ship.
“I looked to Shackleton for guidance,” Geiger says, “and one of his defining characteristics was perseverance. He was patient and resolute.”
Shackleton is best known for rescuing the crew of the Endurance after it was crushed by pack ice in the Weddell Sea and sunk, leaving them stranded on the Arctic ice fields in 1915.
“What followed was a year of almost incredible trials, during which Shackleton demonstrated the skills which have rightly earned him a reputation as one of the greatest leaders of all time,” writes Nathaniel Philbrick in his foreword to Alfred Lansing's Endurance: The Incredible Voyage of Shackleton.
Several months after the Endurance became trapped in the ice, it sank, leaving Shackleton and 27 crew members stranded on an ice floe and dashing their hopes of becoming the first people to walk across Antarctica. Shackleton led a small group of men in a small boat to South Georgia, where they successfully rescued the remaining crew.
Two years had passed since the Endurance had set sail from England, and although the crew was exhausted and dehydrated, Shackleton wrote to his wife Emily, “We have been through hell and back without a single life lost.”
Geiger's patience finally paid off when, around 7 p.m. on June 9, he was watching the sonar monitor in the ship's lab when he suddenly spotted a strange shape.
“I knew right away it was the Quest,” he said in an interview. “The ship was intact. The ship was sitting on its keel, the masts were down, and you could see it on the ocean floor.”
Geiger immediately summoned the entire crew, including veteran shipwreck hunter David Mearns, who had helped plan the voyage, to the ship's laboratory.
“They were jumping up and down, slapping each other on the back,” Means said in an interview, describing the crew's reaction at the time of the discovery. “They were just having a moment of ecstasy.”
The crew refocused and spent the next five hours flying the ship's sonar back and forth over the wreckage, gathering more angles and photos of the wreckage on the bottom of the Labrador Sea. Eventually, the crew was able to say with certainty that they had found the Quest.
Mearns said there are already plans to return to Labrador waters later this year to capture more images and video footage of the wreck.
Shackleton was planning to use the Quest to explore parts of the Arctic, much like he had done with the Endurance, when he died in his cabin on January 5, 1922. The Quest was anchored near South Georgia, the island where Shackleton had planned to rescue the Endurance crew. For the next 40 years, the ship was used for rescue missions, exploration, and sealing trips, according to Canadian Geographic magazine. On its voyage on May 5, 1962, the ship suffered a similar fate to the Endurance, being damaged by ice and sinking off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, according to the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. The Quest's crew survived.
More than a century after his death on the Quest, Shackleton's voyage continues to fascinate historians and the general public through popular books, a Harvard Business School class on “resilient leadership” and an upcoming biopic starring Tom Hardy.
Geiger, who is aboard a research vessel that normally bans alcohol, was given permission to bring along a few bottles of champagne in case the Quest was discovered, but kept the information secret from the crew so as not to disrupt the voyage.
Fortunately, Geiger didn't have to keep her secret for long.
“I can honestly say that was the best champagne I've ever had,” he said.