Watch: Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance seen as never before in detailed 3D scan

Digital scan, created by Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust, is part of new documentary on the explorer’s vessel

Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance has been seen as never before in a detailed 3D scan.
The wreck of the explorer’s vessel was found 3,000 metres beneath the surface of Antarctica’s Weddell Sea in 2022, more than a century after its sinking in November 1915.
Shackleton, an Anglo-Irish explorer, was leading an attempt to cross the Antarctic when his ship sank after being crushed by pack ice.
Now a new digital scan made from 25,000 separate images of Endurance has captured it in remarkable detail.
Scattered dinner plates and a missing boot can be seen on the deck amid the wreckage of collapsed masts and rigging. Researchers have even found a flare gun that was referenced in journals kept by the crew.
Frank Hurley, the 1915 expedition’s photographer, records that the gun was left on the deck after being fired as the ship was lost to the ice.
Dr John Shears, who led the expedition that found Endurance, said: “Hurley gets this flare gun, and he fires the flare gun into the air with a massive detonator as a tribute to the ship.
“And then in the diary, he talks about putting it down on the deck. And there we are. We come back over 100 years later, and there’s that flare gun – incredible.”
The 3D project was made possible by the preservation of the wreck. There have been no trees in Antarctica for at least 30 million years, meaning that no wood-eating organisms live in the water.
The ship’s name can still be seen clearly above a golden star on its stern.
Shackleton’s expedition left England in August 1914, intending to achieve the first crossing of Antarctica from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea via the South Pole.
But by January 1915, Endurance was trapped in the ice and by October it had been badly damaged by the pressure of the surrounding floes, forcing the 28 men on board to abandon ship.
The vessel eventually sank on Nov 21 1915, leaving the crew stranded, before Shackleton and five others embarked on an extraordinary rescue mission to bring the rest of them home.
In nothing but a reinforced lifeboat, they sailed 810 miles across the Southern Ocean in 15 days to summon help at South Georgia. All 22 crew members who had been left behind were rescued on Aug 30 1916 – 128 days after Shackleton had set out for South Georgia.
Nico Vincent, from Deep Ocean Search, who developed the technology for the scans, along with Voyis Imaging and McGill University, said: “It’s absolutely fabulous. The wreck is almost intact, like she sank yesterday.”
The shipwreck is now surrounded by a 1,500 metre exclusion zone to protect it from looters.
The 2022 expedition found the ship just four miles away from where Frank Worsley, its captain, marked its final position.
Experts used sonar to locate the vessel before sending underwater drones with high-resolution cameras to capture scans and detailed images.
Describing the moment the ship was found, Dan Snow, the TV historian  who was filming a documentary about the expedition, said: “It was one of the most extraordinary moments of my life.
“The rumour swept through the ship and we all rushed to the monitoring station and there we saw a clear target, 10,000 feet below, and subsequent surveys showed it was Endurance.”
Mensun Bound, a marine archaeologist who served as the expedition’s director of exploration, hailed the condition of the ship when it was discovered.
“Without any exaggeration, this is the finest wooden shipwreck I have ever seen – by far,” he said.
The scan was created by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust, which organised the expedition that found the ship, as part of a new documentary called Endurance.
It premieres at the London Film Festival on Oct 12, and will be released in cinemas in Britain on Oct 14.