Shackleton knew his doomed ship wasn’t the strongest before sailing

110 years have passed since the endurance, often called the strongest wooden ship, when the liba built, sank after he fell into a trap in Sea ice near AntarcticaThe field but revaluation of evidence shows that endurance was actually much weaker than other polar ships of that time, and also suggests that the leader of the expedition Ernest Shekleton knew about his shortcomings.

Sheklton planned Going through Antarctica From the sea of ​​Wedell to the Ross Sea, a visit to the South Pole on the road. But endurance never reached the ice coast of Antarctica. In 1915, he stuck in the ice at the Wedell sea and sank – although all the crew members survived the disaster using the saving boats of the ship.

Jukka Tukhkuri At the University of Aalto, Finland, she was involved in the expedition of Enduraance22 discovered the crash of the ship on the seabed In 2022. Tukhkuri began to wonder why such a strong ship sank. But when he investigated the history of the polar ships built at that time, he realized that there was a simple explanation: endurance was not particularly strong.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a handful of boats was built to cope with sea ice. Some were more oval in shape than a standard ship with smaller keel. Both functions make it difficult to get sea ice to get a strong purchase on the sides of the vessel, as a result of which the ice is fastened under the case. Inside the ships, meanwhile, the lower deck gave the hull greater stiffness, because they crossed on the right side of the ship along its full length, creating a box similar to shipbuildings that strengthened it.

Endurance did not have any of these functions. It was a relatively long ship with high keel. Tukhkuri calculated that as a result of this design, some other polar ships of that time can withstand 1.7 and 2.7 times more compression than endurance. Moreover, the engine of the ship was so large that the lower deck could only go through the length of the ship, ending in the machine compartment and creating weaknesses in the case where there was no enhancing box.

When Tukhkuri studied Shekleton's correspondence, he found that the researcher knew about these problems. In a letter to his wife shortly before he went to Antarctica, Shekleton admitted that Nimrod, the ship, which he used during the earlier expedition of the Antarctic, was stronger. In any case, he continued the expedition. “He was ready to take a chance,” says Tukhkuri.

As expected, endurance could not cope with the pressure of sea ice. The boat was compressed and bent, and ultimately its keel was torn to leave a gaping hole under the water line.

But by that time, the myth that endurance was the strongest wooden ship in the world, and its origin may be an article in TimeAccording to Tukhkuri, and Shekleton immortalized this idea. It is unclear why he did this, but this is a detail that, according to Tukuri, adds color to the history of the ill -fated expedition of Shekleton. “Endurance was a strong and heroic ship in a poetic sense,” he says. “In the engineering sense, unfortunately, it was not.”