Researchers hope to find the lost ship of Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton when they set off on a major international scientific expedition next year.

Led by scientists at Cambridge University's Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI), the team hopes to finally locate the Endurance, which has lain at the bottom of the Weddell Sea since 1915.

Slated for 2019, the scientific mission to investigate the Larsen C Ice Shelf will also search for the wreck 3,000m beneath the waves.

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The group, which includes researchers from universities in South Africa and New Zealand, will be the first to use autonomous underwater vehicles to scan the seabed for the ship's remains.

Thick pack ice and extreme weather are among challenges faced by those who venture to the isolated and wild region, much as Shackleton faced more than a century ago.

SPRI's director, Professor Julian Dowdeswell, chief scientist of the Weddell Sea Expedition 2019, told The Times that the Agulhas II expedition ship would be put to the test by the conditions.

He said: "Whatever ship you have, it's possible it won't get there. It could be a better or worse sea ice year, so everybody is going into this with their eyes open."

Shackleton's attempt to cross Antarctica began in 1914.

After the vessel became trapped in ice for 10 months and then sank, the explorer and his crew survived for six months before reaching uninhabited Elephant Island.

Shackleton and five other men then set off to seek help at a whaling station on the island of South Georgia, with their perilous journey regarded as one of the most heroic feats of navigation.

After three unsuccessful attempts, Shackleton finally rescued his men in August 1916.

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Alexandra Shackleton, the explorer's granddaughter, supports Prof Dowdeswell's expedition, but as her family owns the wreck their permission will be needed if any items are to be recovered.

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She told the paper: "I would love to see her image. But I'm not sure how I would feel about having her touched."

As for the team's chances of actually finding the Endurance, she said it is a "very big if".

"People plan to do things in the Antarctic and the Antarctic decides otherwise, as my grandfather found," she said.

Press Association</s>Researchers hope to find the lost ship of Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton when they set off on a major international scientific expedition next year.

Led by scientists at Cambridge University’s Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI), the team hopes to finally locate the Endurance, which has lain at the bottom of the Weddell Sea since 1915.

Slated for 2019, the scientific mission to investigate the Larsen C Ice Shelf will also search for the wreck 3,000m beneath the waves.

The group, which includes researchers from universities in South Africa and New Zealand, will be the first to use autonomous underwater vehicles to scan the seabed for the ship’s remains.

Thick pack ice and extreme weather are among challenges faced by those who venture to the isolated and wild region, much as Shackleton faced more than a century ago.

SPRI’s director Julian Dowdeswell, chief scientist of the Weddell Sea Expedition 2019, told The Times that the Agulhas II expedition ship would be put to the test by the conditions.

“Whatever ship you have, it’s possible it won’t get there,” said Prof Dowdeswell. “It could be a better or worse sea ice year, so everybody is going into this with their eyes open.”

David Mearns, an American shipwreck hunter, is also preparing to launch an expedition of his own next year to find the Endurance.

Shackleton’s attempt to cross Antarctica began in 1914. He was warned by the Norwegian whalers that that season’s ice was particularly bad in the Weddell Sea, and it extended further north than they had ever seen. Despite this advice, Shackleton departed South Georgia on December 5, 1914, for Antarctic shores, and within two days they were manoeuvring through pack ice.

They finally saw land in the distance on January 17, 1915. However, on the following day, the ship was halted in its course by the ice and was trapped for 10 months before it finally sank.

The explorer and his crew survived for six months, even shooting their pack dogs for meat, before sailing for the uninhabited Elephant Island in three lifeboats, one of which was manned by Tom Crean, the Antarctic explorer from Anascaul, Co Kerry.

Tom Crean heroically kept the Wills afloat, sailing through a labyrinth of ice and battling the rough sea, all while the boat was taking on water and constantly needed to be bailed out.

Conditions on the boat were appalling as the soaked and hungry men suffered from seasickness and diarrhoea and, of course, the freezing temperatures. At night the men would huddle together to generate heat, and would awake covered in permafrost.

Shackleton, himself from Kilkea, Athy, Co Kildare, and five other men, including Crean, then set sail again to seek help at a whaling station on the island of South Georgia, with their perilous two-week journey regarded as one of the most heroic feats of navigation.

After three unsuccessful attempts, the men were finally rescued in August 1916.

Alexandra Shackleton, the explorer’s granddaughter, supports Prof Dowdeswell’s expedition, but as her family owns the wreck, their permission will be needed if any items are to be recovered.

“I would love to see her image. But I’m not sure how I would feel about having her touched,” said Ms Shackleton.

As for the team’s chances of actually finding the Endurance, she said it is a “very big if”.

“People plan to do things in the Antarctic and the Antarctic decides otherwise, as my grandfather found,” she said.</s>AN INTERNATIONAL EFFORT to try and locate the lost ship of Irish Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton will take place next year.

Kildare-born Shackleton left with his crew, made up of men from Britain and Ireland, in 1914, in an attempt to make the first land crossing of the Antarctic continent.

Their ship, the Endurance, sank in November 1915, and no trace has been seen since. At least three previous attempts to find the ship have failed.

The vessel became stuck and was slowly crushed by ice in the Weddell Sea, with its crew forced to flee and make a perilous journey in lifeboats before setting up a camp on Elephant Island, on the very edge of the continent.

Shackleton decided to re-fit one of their surviving lifeboats so some of the crew, led by the Kildare explorer, could make a perilous journey through the Southern Ocean to raise the alarm and organise a rescue party.

British scientists will lead the 45-day expedition. They expect to reach the Antarctic at the beginning of next year.

The team will be led by Professor Julian Dowdeswell, who serves as director of the Scott Polar Research Institute and as professor of physical geography at the University of Cambridge.

The team’s main objective will be to visit and study the Larsen C Ice Shelf, which last year created one of the biggest icebergs ever recorded in Antarctica.

The Endurance was lost so close to this location that the team have decided to try and find it. “It would be a shame not to,” Dowdeswell told the BBC.

Scientists from London’s Natural History Museum said in 2013 that they believe the ship may have been protected from wood-boring worms due to the sea’s currents.

The crew of the Endurance pull lifeboats across the ice. Source: Royal Geographical Society

The scientists heading to the Antarctic next year aim to send autonomous underwater vehicles to do an ice survey and to map the seafloor to try and find signs of the ship.

Despite the loss of the ship, all 28 crew members survived the voyage. Shackleton’s writings revealed the freezing conditions his rescue party endured as they set out to cross the ocean from the Antarctic.

Shackleton was already a seasoned polar explorer before the voyage, and he was knighted by King Edward VII on his return home. The Endurance expedition is considered the last major expedition of what is referred to as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.</s>British researchers are preparing to launch a mission to find the lost ship of Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton.

A team led by scientists at Cambridge University’s Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) is hoping to finally locate the Endurance, which sunk to the bottom of the Weddell Sea in 1915.

Slated for 2019, the scientific mission to investigate the Larsen C Ice Shelf will also search for the wreck 3,000m beneath the waves.

The group, which includes researchers from universities in South Africa and New Zealand, will be the first to use autonomous underwater vehicles to scan the seabed for the ship’s remains.

Thick pack ice and extreme weather are among challenges faced by those who venture to the isolated and wild region, much as Shackleton faced more than a century ago.

SPRI’s director, Professor Julian Dowdeswell, chief scientist of the Weddell Sea Expedition 2019, told The Times that the Agulhas II expedition ship would be put to the test by the conditions.

He said: ‘Whatever ship you have, it’s possible it won’t get there. It could be a better or worse sea ice year, so everybody is going into this with their eyes open.’

After the vessel became trapped in ice for 10 months and then sank, the explorer and his crew survived for six months before reaching uninhabited Elephant Island.

Shackleton and five other men then set off to seek help at a whaling station on the island of South Georgia, with their perilous journey regarded as one of the most heroic feats of navigation.

After three unsuccessful attempts, Shackleton finally rescued his men in August 1916.

Alexandra Shackleton, the explorer’s granddaughter, supports Prof Dowdeswell’s expedition, but as her family owns the wreck their permission will be needed if any items are to be recovered.

She told the paper: ‘I would love to see her image. But I’m not sure how I would feel about having her touched.’

As for the team’s chances of actually finding the Endurance, she said it is a ‘very big if’.

‘People plan to do things in the Antarctic and the Antarctic decides otherwise, as my grandfather found,” she said.</s>Early next year, an international team of explorers will investigate the area in-and-around the massive iceberg that split away from Antarctica’s Larsen C ice shelf in July 2017. As an added bonus, the researchers will also attempt to locate the wreck of the Endurance, which sunk in 1915 as part of the ill-fated Shackleton expedition.



Led by the University of Cambridge’s Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI), and funded by the Flotilla Foundation—a Netherlands-based charitable trust—the Antarctic Weddell Sea Expedition is scheduled to take place from January to February 2019, as reported by the BBC. Using the icebreaking polar supply and research vessel SA Agulhas II, the 45-day mission will truly be an international effort, involving researchers from the UK, the US, New Zealand, and South Africa.

The primary goal of the mission will be to explore Iceberg A-68, which calved from Antarctica’s Larsen C Ice Shelf on July 12, 2017. The astoundingly huge berg features a surface area of 2,240 square miles (5,800 square kilometers), which is about the size of Delaware or about four times the size of London.



It just so happens, however, that the wreck of the Endurance—a historic three-mast ship that went down on November 21, 1915—is located nearby, some 115 to 175 miles (185 to 280 km) from the location of Iceberg A-68. Pending favorable weather and ocean conditions, the researchers will use the opportunity to search for the ill-fated ship, which rests at a depth of nearly two miles.

After drifting in the Weddell Sea ice for months, the Endurance was eventually crushed by encroaching ice. The ship had to be abandoned, with the crew of 28 escaping aboard three lifeboats. The survivors spent the next five months on Antarctica’s ice floes, eventually reaching Elephant Island. Expedition leader Ernest Shackleton, along with five others, set off for South Georgia Island—located 920 miles away—while the remaining crew waited. It wouldn’t be until August 1916 that everyone was rescued.

Next year, the Weddell Sea Expedition will travel to the last known position of the ship and conduct a search using Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) provided by US company Ocean Infinity. “They are fitted with downward-looking multi-beam echosounders, which can map out on a grid the shape of the seafloor,” Julian Dowdeswell, who will lead the team, told the BBC. “You look at that for any signs of the ship and then focus in with cameras if you find something interesting.”

The researchers will also have the diary of Captain Frank Worsley at their disposal, who kept meticulous records of the Endurance’s position. The ship’s final coordinates were listed at 68°39'30.0" South and 52°26'30.0" West. Despite this knowledge, however, three prior attempts to find the ship have failed. Should the ship be located, it will be listed as a historic monument and protected by international law.

“If the expedition finds the wreck we will survey, photograph, and film it and document its condition,” Dowdeswell told The Telegraph. “If there are deep-water marine species colonizing the wreck, the marine biologists may try to obtain scientific samples using the [ROVs], if that can be deployed above the site from the ship,” adding “we will not remove any items from the wreck.”

At the Larsen C Ice Shelf, the ROVs will explore the cavity under the newly exposed shelf, map the seafloor, and investigate the overhanging ice canopy. Researchers on board the ship will extract samples of ice from the shelf, which they can read like tree rings to see the ebbs and flows of the ice over time.

But it won’t be easy. Earlier this year, a mission to the Larsen C Ice Shelf had to be canceled owing to treacherous conditions. It’s been over a century since the Endurance sunk, but Antarctica is still a very dangerous place.</s>When Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance succumbed to the Antarctic pack ice on November 21, 1915, he and his crew began one of the most gruelling survival attempts in history.

Since the explorer led his 27 men to safety more than a century ago, there has been no sign of the ship.

But now, in an echo of the golden age of exploration, the race is on to the Antarctic once more – as two rival expeditions hunt for the lost vessel.

A British-led team from Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge University, along with universities in South Africa and New Zealand, plans to launch autonomous underwater vehicles almost two miles under the ice.

The multi-million pound expedition will set out in January 2019 in research ship SA Agulhas II, The Times reported.

At least three previous plans to find the wreck have failed, but those behind the expedition – armed with co-ordinates taken by the Endurance’s captain Frank Worsley as the ship sunk – believe the unmanned submarines could finally mean success.

However, they face some competition from US shipwreck hunter David Mearns, who has been studying Endurance for more than 15 years in preparation for an expedition of his own.

He believes the Agulhas II is not powerful enough to penetrate the thick ice the Endurance yielded to.

His concerns were echoed by the Weddell Sea Expedition 2019’s chief scientist, Julian Dowdeswell, who admitted there was a chance their ship would not be powerful enough.

The explorer’s granddaughter Alexandra is supporting Professor Dowdeswell’s expedition but is also a friend of Mr Mearns, 59.

She said she would be delighted if the wreck were found but added: ‘I’m not sure how I would feel about having her touched.’

Shackleton and his crew spent weeks on the ice, eventually using lifeboats to reach Elephant Island. He and five others sailed for South Georgia for help.

The last of the crew were not rescued until August 1916.</s>Sir Ernest Shackleton’s great ambition was always to be a member of the first team to reach the South Pole. He was beaten to that goal by Roald Amundsen in 1911 but the feat he pulled off a few years later was, in its own way, equally remarkable. When his ship the Endurance was crushed by pack ice in the Antarctic and sank in 1915, Shackleton led its crew of 27 off the ice to land and then embarked on a trip of heroic foolhardiness to fetch help. Ever since, the Endurance has been described as the Holy Grail of wreck hunters everywhere and now a team of scientists from the UK, South Africa and New Zealand are setting out to find her. Funded to the tune of several million pounds by a Dutch environmental charity, the expedition will set sail next January in the research ship SA Agulhas II.

Previous attempts to trace the Endurance have been foiled by the pack ice – up to more than 6ft thick – that forms an almost permanent cover over her watery tomb. But the latest group’s secret weapon is a fleet of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) that can travel for “tens of miles” in their hunt for the wreck, believed to be lying 10,000ft below the surface in the Weddell Sea off Graham Land. Given the vagaries of the Antarctic weather, success is by no means assured. As Shackleton’s granddaughter Alexandra Shackleton says: “People plan to do things in the Antarctic and the Antarctic decides otherwise, as my grandfather found.” But while Shackleton failed in his mission, he did so in such heroic fashion that his expedition has gone down in the annals of polar exploration as one of the greatest ever staged.

By the time he set out to assemble his team for the attempt he was already a seasoned polar pioneer. He had been with Captain Scott when the man who was to reach the South Pole nine years later made his first bid to reach it in 1902 – finishing just 530 miles short. Five years later Shackleton led an expedition of his own with the same objective – this time finishing just 97 miles from the Pole. When Amundsen beat both of them to it, Shackleton reckoned only one challenge remained, “the crossing of the South Polar continent from sea to sea”. Folklore has it that he recruited his team by placing a newspaper advertisement: “Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success.” The collection of Royal Navy sailors, trawler hands and recent Cambridge University graduates whom he hired in this way boarded the Endurance off Southend on August 4, 1914.

But the mission was almost over before it began. After Shackleton read a newspaper report that the government had issued an order for the general mobilisation of troops, he sent a telegram to the Admiralty offering his ship, stores and services to the country in the event of hostilities. Within an hour Shackleton received a reply from the Admiralty with the single word “Proceed”. Within two hours another arrived from Winston Churchill – then the First Lord of the Admiralty – endorsing the decision to carry on. By midnight Britain had declared war on Germany. Three months later the Endurance arrived at South Georgia in the Falkland Islands and moored at a Norwegian whaling station for a month as Shackleton waited for ice further south to disperse. The Endurance finally got under way on December 5 and over the next six weeks battled through 1,000 miles of pack ice. She was just 100 miles – one day’s sail – from her destination, when the temperature dropped dramatically, cementing together the loose ice around the ship.

In the words of the ship’s storekeeper, she was soon trapped “like an almond in a piece of toffee”. Waiting for a thaw many of the men played football and hockey. Others sought to build up their provisions by hunting for seal and penguin. After 281 days the danger from the encroaching ice was so great that Shackleton ordered the ship’s three lifeboats, plus all their gear, provisions and sledges, to be lowered on to the ice and they made camp in five tents. The Endurance finally sank on November 21, 1915. After camping on ice floes the men eventually reached Elephant Island, 346 miles from the Endurance and hundreds from any inhabited land, with limited supplies. Shackleton realised that their only hope was to return to South Georgia to get help, an 800-mile journey across the most stormy stretch of ocean in the world in a 22ft sailing boat. They could expect to encounter “Cape Horn Rollers” – waves that were 50 feet from crest to trough.</s>After 10 hellish months stranded in the frozen wastes of the ­Antarctic, Ernest Shackleton and his 27 crew members knew exactly what Endurance meant.

They set sail full of hope and ambition, launching the explorer’s attempt at the continent’s first land crossing.

But the grandly-titled Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition was scuppered before it began as their three-masted wooden ship became trapped in polar pack ice.

On November 21, 1915, Shackleton and his men were forced to abandon ship, then watched as Endurance slowly sank.

He was overcome, writing in his diary: “At 5pm she went down by the head... I cannot write about it.”

But the phlegmatic skipper, Captain Frank Worsley, carried on taking precise sextant readings until the very end.

And now, a century later, those ­coordinates will be used alongside the latest navigational aids and hi-tech equipment in a new polar race echoing that heroic age of Antarctic exploration.

For two rival teams are setting out to try to find the Endurance’s icy grave, two miles beneath the waves.

Scientists from the University of Cambridge’s Scott Polar Research ­Institute will lead colleagues from South Africa and New Zealand on a 45-day mission to the Weddell Sea.

They leave a base in East Antarctica in January on SA Agulhas II, a research ship that can break ice a metre thick.

Using unmanned submarines – autonomous underwater vehicles, or AUVS – they will scour the seabed for Endurance, which at least three other missions have failed to find and is thought to lie beneath the 17,000sq mile Larson C ice shelf.

If the wreck is found – and scientists from London’s Natural History Museum believe the sea ­conditions may have preserved it from wood-boring worms – it will be listed as a historic monument and protected under international law.

“We will survey, photograph and film it and document its condition,” said Professor Julian Dowdeswell, director of the project.

“If there are deep-water marine species colonising the wreck, the marine biologists may try to obtain samples using the remotely operated vehicle, if that can be deployed above the site from the ship.

“However, we will not remove any items from the wreck.”

But a rival expedition to find Endurance has been in the planning for more than 15 years, headed by US shipwreck hunter David Mearns, 59.

He believes the Cambridge team’s ship is not powerful enough to penetrate the ice that claimed Endurance, doubting it can get close enough the wreck to use the AUVs, which have limited battery power.

And Prof Dowdeswell admitted: “Whatever ship you have, it’s possible it won’t get there. It could be a better or worse sea ice year, so everybody is going into this with their eyes open.”

His Weddell Sea Expedition 2019 has the blessing of Shackleton’s granddaughter, Alexandra – who is also a long-standing friend of Mr Mearns.

Her family still owns the wreck, so they would need to give permission for any items to be removed.

She said: “I would love to see her image. But I’m not sure how I would feel about having her touched. It might be nice and evocative to find the ship’s bell.”

But she says finding the Endurance is a “very big if”, adding: “People plan to do things in the Antarctic and the Antarctic decides otherwise, as my grandfather found.”

Endurance’s loss began one of the most gruelling survival stories in history, inspiring books, films and Kenneth Brannagh’s 2001 TV series, Shackleton.

The 28 crew members survived five months camped out on a large ice floe, hoping it would drift toward an island where they knew stores were stashed.

But on April 9, 1916, the floe broke in two, forcing them to take to three lifeboats and head for the nearest land.

After five days at sea, the exhausted men landed at Elephant Island, 346 miles from the sunken Endurance. It was the first time they had stood on solid ground for 497 days.

But they were far from any shipping routes and rescue was unlikely.

So Shackleton decided to risk an open-boat row of 720 nautical miles to the whaling stations on South Georgia, setting out 10 days later on April 24.

He and five others took two weeks to make the treacherous journey – only to face a hurricane that almost dashed them against the rocks.

Shackleton and two of his men then trekked for 36 hours across mountainous terrain to raise the alarm – with screws pushed into their boots to help them climb.

It would take another three months and three aborted missions before Shackleton, with the help of a Chilean navy tug, returned to rescue his remaining crew.

He never achieved his dream of crossing Antarctica and with Europe in the midst of the First World War, the golden age of polar exploration was over.

When later generations took up the challenge they found it just as arduous.

In 2016, a British army officer and Shackleton fan died 30 miles short of achieving the feat himself.

He was Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Worsley, 55, a distant relative of Captain Frank Worsley, the skipper who watched the Endurance sink, calculating the position with his sextant and chronometer – 68°39’30.0” South and 52°26’30.0” West, 100-150 nautical miles east of Larsen C.

Now, a new generation of explorers will set out to find Shackleton’s ship.

And only time will tell if modern technology can beat the ice that broke his crew’s Endurance.</s>When on Nov. 21, 1915 the polar explorer ship Endurance finally yielded to the Antarctic pack ice, Ernest Shackleton and his crew began one of the most gruelling survival attempts in history.

Their five-month ordeal on the ice floes followed by a 720-nautical-mile dash to South Georgia has since become the stuff of legend.

But of the ship itself, no trace has been detected since the day it went down.

Yesterday, a British-led team announced it is setting out to find the wreck of Endurance, thought to be at rest nearly two miles beneath the Larsen C Ice Shelf in the Weddell Sea.

Operating from the research vessel S A Agulhas II, the expedition will use the most advanced unmanned submarines in the world to scour the sea bed.

But they will also arrive armed with an equally important tool — information from the diary of Captain Frank Worsley, the renowned navigator who was busy recording precise sextant readings even as the ship went down.

At least three previous plans to find the Endurance have failed.

If the Weddell Sea Expedition 2019 succeeds, the ship will be listed as a historic monument, protected under international law.

In 2013, scientists at the Natural History Museum said they believed the ship may have been preserved by wood-boring worms by the Antarctic Circumpolar Current.

“If the expedition finds the wreck we will survey, photograph and film it and document its condition,” said Julian Dowdeswell, director of the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, who is leading the team.

“If there are deep-water marine species colonizing the wreck, the marine biologists may try to obtain scientific samples using the Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV), if that can be deployed above the site from the ship.

“However, we will not remove any items from the wreck.”

Built in Norway in 1912, the Endurance was arguably the strongest wooden ship ever constructed, with a 85-inch keel made from four pieces of soil oak. But unlike “bowl-bottomed” ships of the period, it was not designed to rise out of the ice when it closed in. It meant that when the ship became beset amid the polar pack ice, the pressure was taken by the hull, which gave up after 10 months.

Shackleton and his 27 crew members subsequently spent weeks surviving on the ice, hoping it would drift them towards safety. Eventually they used three lifeboats to reach Elephant Island. Shackleton and five others then set sail for South Georgia in search of help, arriving two weeks later. It was not until August 1916 that the last of his crew was rescued.

Funded by the Flotilla Foundation, the new exhibition will send drones ahead of the S A Agulhas II to seek out the best route through the ice.

The effort to locate the Endurance will be undertaken alongside a detailed scientific study of the Larsen C Ice Shelf, which is acutely susceptible to atmospheric warming from above and ocean warming from below.

“Our expedition will be the first to use autonomous underwater vehicles,” said Dowdeswell. “Because they can free swim, it is not necessary for the vessel to be directly above the wreck location. So long as we can get close enough to the location with the ship, we can deploy them under the ice and conduct the search.”

Scientists have found that snowfall is increasing in Antarctica, which could help counteract rising sea levels.

The first comprehensive study of snowfall in Antarctica, carried out by the British Antarctic Survey and revealed at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly in Vienna, has proven that there has been up to a 10 per cent increase in precipitation over the last 200 years, leading to more snowfall.</s>An international expedition next year will try to reach the site of a major new iceberg. The Weddell Sea Expedition 2019 aims to study the Larsen C Ice Shelf and, if it gets the opportunity, to seek out the seafloor location of Ernest Shackleton's lost ship, Endurance. Expedition leader, Prof Julian Dowdeswell from the Scott Polar Research Institute, spoke with our science correspondent Jonathan Amos.
The Scott Polar Research Institute announces a mission planned for 2019 to search for Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton's famed lost ship Endurance, which sank in 1914 leading to a multi-year rescue operation.