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The explorer’s journey to Antarctica was likely doomed before it began.
By Sara Novak
On Oct. 27, 1915, after being caught and crushed by packed ice for nine months in the Weddell Sea off Antarctica, Ernest Shackleton and his crew abandoned the Endurance and their quest to traverse the frozen continent by land. The doomed ship drifted atop the ice for three more weeks before finally sinking.
For over a century, experts have put the blame for the ship’s demise on an ice floe overwhelming the rudder and creating a large gash in the vessel. But a study released Monday in the journal Polar Record contends that the ship, not the ice, was to blame. The Endurance was ill equipped for its mission, a flaw that Shackleton was aware of long before he launched to Antarctica.
