In 2024, we inform about the discovery of Search wreck, the polar exploration ship that served Arctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton on his last voyage. Shackleton died before reaching his destination and the ship sank in 1962. The Royal Canadian Geographical Society (RCGS) has now published the first images of the wreck, more than 60 years after it sank. published in Canadian Geographic Magazine.
Shackleton, of course, is most famous for his ill-fated voyage on the Endurance, which became trapped in sea ice in 1914 and sank. Shackleton and his crew defied the odds and survived. (He Endurance the shipwreck was finally found in 2022.) When Shackleton returned to England, the country was embroiled in World War I and many of his men enlisted. Shackleton was considered too old for active service. He was also deeply indebted to the Endurance expedition, earning a living on the lecture circuit. But he still dreamed of making another expedition to the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska to explore the Beaufort Sea. He got financing from an old school friend, John Quillier Rowett.
Shackleton bought a wooden Norwegian whaler, seal iwhich his wife Emily renamed Search. When the Canadian government withdrew its support, the mission returned to Antarctica and the Search received extensive modernization. Improvements included a new deckhouse, a heated crow’s nest, wireless equipment and an odograph to automatically track and plot the route, as well as a Lucas deep-water sounding machine, a large and expensive collection of cameras and photographic equipment, and even a small airplane.
He Search expedition to Antarctica he set sail in 1921. Shackleton never reached his intended destination and fell ill in late December, just as the ship was about to leave Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He had begun drinking heavily to “deaden the pain,” even though he normally did not allow alcohol while at sea. He Search He arrived in southern Georgia on January 4, 1922, and Shackleton made his last diary entry before retiring to bed.
