Endurance - 3D scans show Shackleton's ship on seabed 'like she sank yesterday'

More than a century after it sank below the icy Weddell Sea in Antarctica, forcing its crew to embark on one of the most celebrated survival quests in history, new images have revealed the remarkable state of preservation of Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance.

- Esther Addley

The vessel, which sank in 1915 after becoming stuck in pack ice, was discovered in 2022 resting at a depth of 3,000 metres below what Shackleton called "the worst portion of the worst sea in the world".

The images, compiled from thousands of detailed 3D scans of the wreckage, show how little it has changed or decayed in the century since, with the ship's rigging, helm and woodwork all remarkably preserved under the icy waters.

A number of the crew's dining plates can be seen resting on the deck, along with a single knee-length boot, which may have belonged to Frank Wild, Shackleton's second-in-command.

Perhaps most remarkably of all, the images show a flare gun among the debris - the same gun that was fired by Frank Hurley, the expedition's photographer, as the Endurance sank, an event he described in his diary.

"Hurley gets this flare gun, and he fires the flare gun into the air with a massive detonator as a tribute to the ship," John Shears, who led the expedition that found Endurance, told the BBC.