Shipwreck hunters found the Quest, which Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton once captained, nearly intact on the seabed, 28.78 km off the Canadian coast.
Shackleton was on the expedition ship Quest and died of a heart attack in January 1922. The Quest not only preserves the history of his voyages but also carries artifacts from expeditions that lasted until 1962, when the ship sank. “Finding the Quest is one of the final chapters in the extraordinary story of Ernest Shackleton,” said John Geiger, expedition leader and executive director of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.
A team of international experts determined Quest’s location using sonar equipment on June 9 after 17 hours of searching in an area of 44.4 km wide, according to CNN. Before discovering the ship, the team went through months of analysis to localize the best area to detect the wreck, according to oceanographer David Mearns, who directed the search.
Shackleton, who was on his fourth expedition to Antarctica, died at the age of 47 while docked on the island of South Georgia in the South Atlantic. The famous polar explorer was buried there while the ship and crew continued to complete the Shackleton – Rowett expedition. But thick ice made it difficult for them to complete the trip and the Quest returned to Cape Town in South Africa, according to London’s Natural History Museum.
Initially, Shackleton intended to use the Quest for an Arctic expedition in Canada but was not approved by the Canadian prime minister at the time. His death marked the end of a glorious era of Antarctic exploration. But the Quest’s journey doesn’t end there. After being sold to a Norwegian company, the ship went on to make several other expeditions and eventually became a sealing ship. The Quest sank on May 5, 1962 after crashing into ice in the Labrador Sea off the coast of Canada. The crew evacuated and marked the ship’s final location, about 2.5 km from where the research team found it.
The ship sank stern first. Because of its heavy machinery, it lies upright at a depth of 390 meters below the sea surface, according to Mearns. The Royal Canadian Geographical Society hopes to return to the wreck in the second phase of its remotely operated vehicle (ROV) expedition later this year.