Original subtitles

Tonight, on History's Greatest Mysteries, an in -depth look at a

recent discovery, as Ernest Shackleton's long -lost ship, Endurance, is finally

found, more than a century after it was trapped in polar ice and sank into the

frigid waters of the Antarctic.

And a remarkable discovery 10 ,000 feet below the surface of Antarctica's

Waddell Sea.

Researchers have discovered the British ship called Endurance, the vessel that

launched one of the most remarkable stories of survival and determination.

That led to one of the most challenging shipwreck searches in history.

Fraught with its own peril, the discovery came after years of planning

daring mission that cost millions of dollars.

Hey, you be in the water. Like a torpedo.

Shackleton headed one of the most famous expeditions of the 20th century, a

mission to cross Antarctica that became an all -out fight for survival.

The initial expedition to find the Endurance came tantalizingly close to

locating it.

only to nearly suffer the same fate. We are now just stuck.

I'm Lawrence Fishburne, and tonight's mystery, what really happened to

Shackleton's lost ship?

What secrets can the wreck hold?

And could its discovery change our understanding of an expedition that made

legends of Shackleton and his brave crew?

The full story of Shackleton's lost ice ship, now.

Antarctica.

The most extreme place on Earth.

Temperatures reach 100 below.

Wind whips across it at 200 miles per hour.

This frozen continent surrounds the South Pole.

It's a vast land, entirely covered.

In ice.

Somewhere in these frozen seas lies the holy grail of shipwrecks.

The Endurance.

The ship that carried legendary explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton south in 1914.

Down here the water is so cold, the wooden ship is likely perfectly

But it's so hard to get to that no one's ever been able to hunt for the wreck

until now.

Flying in from across the globe is an international team of ship hunters,

explorers, and scientists.

Two years in the planning and over $250 million of cutting -edge technology

make them think.

they can pull off a world first.

If the data that we have for the wreck site is correct, then we'll find it.

Maritime archaeologist Menson Bound is heading up the surf.

He's got 40 years' experience excavating shipwrecks.

But finding the endurance is the ultimate challenge.

Endurance is...

To my mind, the most famous wreck of all time. She's up there with the Titanic.

If anybody can find the endurance, it's going to be this expedition.

This is the greatest wreck hunt that there's ever been.

This expedition will face the same risks and dangers that Shackleton did a

century ago.

But today's team has come prepared.

The RV has the tension.

You can release it.

It's going to go under.

Steve Santamore leads one of the elite teams of subsea explorers.

So our job will be to document the condition of the wreck on the seaport.

Based in Maryland, his team has found missing plane wrecks and most famously,

surveyed the Titanic.

But hunting Shackleton's wreck, is their most challenging mission yet.

The ship has not been to the Shackleton location, primarily due to the ice pack

and how difficult it is to get here.

This is the equivalent of going to Mars and looking for the wreckage of a

spacecraft. It's just that remote.

To help him search.

Steve's got a secret weapon.

A purpose -built, remotely operated vehicle, or ROV.

This $2 million bot weighs in at over 6 ,000 pounds.

It's equipped with deep -sea cameras and two articulated titanium arms.

Its mission, to dive to the seabed and explore the wreck.

And so one of the things that we do to prepare for the mission is go through

double -check all the connections and tighten up hardware.

Dave O 'Hara from Northern Ireland is Steve's pilot.

Who's there?

I'm in there.

An ex -British Navy engineer, he's been working on robot subs for 12 years.

For me personally, it's a bucket list job.

The shipwreck side of things, it got me inspired to come and do this for a

living, watching guys find Titanic.

Just for the history behind it, the story, the human aspect of it.

And I think that's the same with endurance.

Okay, guys, just let her be. I'm going to start the hydraulics.

Dave's confident that he can get the sub 10 ,000 feet down to the wreck.

But first they've got to find it.

Fortunately, the team has a big clue to where it could be.

To find the exact spot to search, wreck archaeologist Manson Bound is

investigating nautical charts and the ship's original log, kept meticulously

Shackleton's captain, Frank Worsley.

These record Endurance's position on the day she sank.

It gives us the coordinates, latitude and longitude.

If we look at the chart, here we have it.

Right here, this is where she sank.

This is X marks the spot.

Using the data, Manson calculates a target 1 ,200 miles away, across the

treacherous Weddell Sea.

The Weddell Sea is a churning bed of sea ice.

This sea ice breaks into pieces, and it floats around, and it keeps running into

each other, throwing up pressure ridges, and you never know when it's going to

turn totally solid again.

The expedition is also in a race against time.

The Weddell Sea is full of ice year -round.

But as winter approaches...

the ocean around the continent freezes over impassable sea ice covering

an area one and a half times the size of the united states

the

team has a short window to get in and back out or they'll get stuck in the ice

anyone going into that area with a ship is putting their ship and their crew in

jeopardy.

In 1914, two years after the sinking of the Titanic, British explorer Sir Ernest

Shackleton heads south.

I believe it is in our nature to explore, to reach out into the unknown.

The only cruel failure would be not to explore at all.

It's the golden age of polar exploration.

Shackleton is full of ambition, seeking glory for himself and his country.

He was really driven by the fact that it was one of the last few places on Earth

that hadn't been touched by man, and he wanted to be one of the first persons

there.

Shackleton's aim, to make history by crossing the entire Antarctic continent,

from coast to coast, for the first time.

100 years ago, crossing Antarctica would be more difficult than us going to the

moon today.

I think it's the nature of man to always see something we haven't seen before,

whether it's the moon or the South Pole.

Shackleton and his 27 men, they sailed off what we knew of the

world.

But Shackleton will never even make landfall.

Here, at the end of the earth, Shackleton's ship, the Endurance, will

In a disaster that will capture the world's attention.

Fully loaded, the Agulhas II finally sets off, ready to take on the Weddell

So much has gone into this project, so many years of work, so many dreams.

It feels really like my whole life has just come down to this moment.

Now it's time to put everything to the test.

After five days at sea, the expedition to find the ship of legendary explorer

Sir Ernest Shackleton is making good progress.

Now 1 ,500 miles from her starting point, at Penguin Book Cut, the crew is

zeroing in on the wreck site.

On deck, Louisiana native and former Air Force engineer Devin James is part of a

second elite team hunting the 100 -year -old wreck.

It's his job to look after another critical set of equipment, two

underwater vehicles, or AUV.

Basically a drone just like an aerial drone, but we use it in the ocean. So

is used all over the world to...

survey the sea floor without an operator going below the surface.

Coming to you.

Also working on the subs is Chad Bonin.

Like Devin, he's ex -military.

Forward. Roger.

We haven't dealt with ice conditions like this before.

We were and picked to come onto this job.

So there's a lot of pressure to complete the task.

Despite the challenges of sending their AUV subs under the ice,

Chad's got a good attitude.

As long as we're layered up, we're okay, because we're from South Louisiana.

It's usually hot weather, you know.

The team knows where to head, but getting there is tough.

The expedition's hope rests on the Agulhas II.

Weighing in at 14 ,000 tons and costing $170 million,

this ship is designed to smash through ice up to three feet thick.

A double hull of extra thick steel protects the Agulhas II.

And in the engine room.

Second engineer, Mark O 'Reilly, is pushing her four engines to the limit.

These deliver 12 ,000 horsepower.

This is one of two prop shells, 6 ,000 horsepower available on each, and that

will give us enough power to break through one meter of ice at seven miles

hour.

The Agalos II is built for the worst conditions on the planet.

But even for this beast, hitting ice at speed is bad news.

Captain Freddy Lugtelum is the ice pilot, part of the South African crew.

15 years' experience in the Weddell Sea.

If we should hit any sea ice here at 50 knots, it could possibly cause heavy

damage to the vessel.

So we are continuously looking out.

The Titanic famously sank in 1912 because it hit an iceberg at speed.

One wrong move could bring this ship to the same fate.

But unlike the Titanic,

the Agulhas II has an arsenal of modern navigational tools.

This is us here, and this is our speed vector. And you can see that this

is at a distance of 8 .8 miles.

Sometimes you could get 100 targets on a radar at a 12 -mile range, and you

would try to then just cut as much as you can.

To reach the wreck site, the Abellus II has been sailing around the northern

edge of the ice pack.

She will only head into the thicker ice when she has to.

This sea ice is what explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton faced more than 100 years

ago.

When Shackleton took his ship into the Weddell Sea, he knew there was a

tremendous risk that he'd never make it out alive.

Caught on camera by photographer Frank Hurley, the Endurance picks her way

through hundreds of miles of pack ice.

But how could the 144 -foot wooden ship avoid the fate of the Titanic just two

years previous?

Wreck archaeologist Manson Bound is studying the ship's plans.

This was the original design for the Adjurant. She really was a beautiful,

beautiful vessel.

If you look at her bow, you can see it's got four huge oaken timbers here.

That's two times more than any other ship that I know of.

Her bow is over four feet thick.

The keel, or spine, of the ship is seven feet of solid oak.

And to stop her being ripped apart by ice, her hull is cloaked in a wood

green heart.

So durable and strong that it's heavier than iron.

It is extraordinarily hard.

It's... So hard you cannot even drive a nail into it. But this is what

Shackleton needed, because it is resistant to the kind of wear and tear

abrasion that this hull is going to have to withstand once it got into the

Antarctic.

Shackleton named his ship Endurance.

After his family motto, by endurance we conquer.

And the Endurance will need all her strength as she sails further into the

While the ice makes getting to the wreck site a massive challenge, these frigid

waters are also the reason Shackleton's wooden ship is likely preserved at the

bottom of the sea.

In warmer seas, marine creatures eat wooden ships.

The most destructive, a mollusk called a shipworm.

Shipworm can be incredibly destructive to wooden ships.

And they are voracious. They just eat anything and everything in no time at

They can be up to two feet long.

And they just eat, eat, eat, eat.

Recent experiments have revealed that shipworms can't survive in the freezing

Antarctic water.

And newly discovered wrecks from northern Canada prove that icy seas can

preserve wooden ships.

even older than the Endurance.

But even if it's well preserved, the Endurance rests 10 ,000 feet down.

And right now, the sea there is entirely frozen over.

The crew is now beyond the reach of helicopter rescue.

If something goes wrong, they're on their own.

They've reached the west side of the Weddell Sea, as close as they can get to

the wreck site in open water.

Beyond their position is pack ice up to 16 feet thick.

Chad and Devin.

want to test their AUV subs under a nearby ice flow.

We'll be going into sea trials where we're actually going to launch the AUV.

We'll go ahead and release it, send it underwater.

At the wreck site, the AUVs will dive down and use sonar to scan the seabed

the wreck.

It may sound simple, but even testing the AUVs like this is risky.

They've never been under Antarctic ice.

AUV team leader Channing Thomas knows the dangers.

There is a lot of pressure.

If this works, it's going to be extraordinary.

Two years of planning and tens of millions of dollars rests on the AUV sub

its job right.

We're being extra cautious before we put it in the water. Once we launch it,

there's no turning back.

All right, let's go get us a successful launch.

All right, crank up hydraulic.

Yeah, we definitely don't see this in the Gulf of Mexico.

Hey, you be in the water. Like a torpedo.

All right, looking good.

All systems are go.

Stay back here and monitor.

Rod, is that ready to dive?

All right, 30 seconds till it dives.

Come on, cowboy.

Great relief to finally get it under.

We're on our first mission.

We can pull forward a little more. The AUV is getting down to 300 meters right

now.

While the team tracks the AUV sub,

Expedition archaeologist Manson Bound investigates how Shackleton's ship ended

up on this side of the Weddell Sea a century ago.

Here he is coming down the coast of the Weddell Sea and all the while working

his way south, south.

But as he's going, the ice is becoming more and more dense and impenetrable

until eventually he gets all the way down here.

And right here is where he becomes beset.

Just 60 miles.

From the south coast of the Weddell Sea, the ice pack freezes solid around

Sackleton's ship.

The Endurance is trapped.

The temperature suddenly dropped from 20 degrees above zero to 20 degrees below

it. The whole sea froze over and we froze in with it.

Of course, we had no explosives to blast our way out.

We just had picks and shovels.

For 40 hours, his men fight desperately, but they can't free her from the ice.

And at that moment, Shackleton's heart sank because he knew, because it was so

late in the season, that he was frozen in place for winter.

And in the six -month -long Antarctic winter,

Just staying alive is nearly impossible.

Everything is pushing against you.

It's trying to kill you.

That cold is physically painful.

Any piece of exposed skin, just a little bit of a gap in your clothing, that's

like somebody cutting your face with a knife.

The winds, unrelenting, and the snow driven like needles into your

face.

I was out at the South Pole. It was so cold. I removed my glove for just about

minute, maybe a minute and 20 seconds, and my thumb froze solid.

And you think about Shackleton and his men out there in wool and cotton and

things that weren't really designed for that environment.

It just reminds me how tough those men were.

The endurance is completely stuck, but she's 550 miles from where she will

finally sink.

So how did she get there?

Turns out the endurance is still on the move, because the ice is on the

move.

While it may look like a landmass, it's floating on water.

That means whatever the water is doing, whatever the wind is doing, that affects

that surface.

Strong currents and winds in the Weddell Sea spin the entire ice pack in a giant

clockwise rotation.

For ten months, the endurance moves with the ice.

This is the route that the endurance was carried.

We can follow the route very precisely.

The crew was trapped, but they had reason to believe they would escape.

Several years before, another ship, a ship called the Deutschland, had also

become beset down here.

Because the Deutschland was eventually released from the ice, people on the

endurance thought the same thing would happen to them.

Out on deck in the early hours of the morning, the team is waiting for their

sub to return from its test run.

But there's a problem.

Oh, what the hell's going on?

They've lost all contact with their brand new multi -million dollar sub.

Everything started to go well. We were gaining confidence and then

we lost it.

When we saw that it did not surface in front of us or to either side of us,

we figured it had to be in the ice.

The team needs to move fast.

The AUV has 54 hours of battery.

If the battery dies, they'll never get it back.

That's a multi -million dollar loss they can't take.

We're going to search that area right there.

The AUV has two flashers on it.

And the general idea is get the ROV down deep, turn off all our lights, and

hopefully see those beacon.

Right now, I'm very worried.

From day one, we recognized that our nemesis was going to be the ice pack.

know, just as it was Shackleton's, so was it going to be ours.

And hey, what? It's proved to be just that.

After hours of tension, AUV operator Blake Howard finally detects a signal

the missing sub.

The sub is within a mile of the ship, somewhere under the ice.

The first ping when it actually did come through was a great billing for

everybody. It's extremely exciting for her to actually talk back to us.

and it gave it the direction to head towards.

The team continues pinging the sub to triangulate its location.

Then they pick up a response.

It's almost definitely in the head, so it's got to be within range.

Compared to where we were two hours ago. Yes, sir. Exactly right.

So we're getting there.

Are we looking at three meters to seven meters, Captain?

Yeah.

To reach the sub, the Agulhas must get closer, penetrating a 20 -foot -thick

wall. That's well beyond what their ship is built to break.

But they have no choice.

The Agulhas II doesn't ram the ice.

It rides up onto the ice.

And under the weight of the 14 ,000 ton ship, the ice flow starts to break

apart.

The AUV is about here, about 200 meters away.

Each strike releases colossal ice chunks bigger than the size of a house.

By the time they're done, the ship smashed away 114 football fields worth

ice.

We're going to launch the ROV.

They're going to go in and locate it, and then basically they're going to drag

her out.

Across the ship, all eyes are glued to the live feed.

Six and a half meters.

In under the ice. Hey, is that an AUV?

And we've got the AUV visual.

Binding the AUV is a huge relief.

But now, they need to bring it out.

You can see the end of the AUV with the prop.

So it's definitely in a crack.

Dave has to grab the AUV with the robot arm.

All right, so you're pretty much gonna have to fly me into it.

Come on, Bubba.

Slow, slow, slow, slow, slow.

As soon as we started to move, the fish dropped away below us. We've got to go

chase the fish down.

Getting back in there. Going up the track again.

At this depth, the weight of water pressing down on the AUV is equivalent

jumbo jets.

Pilot Dave O 'Hara is finding that fishing at this depth is far from easy.

to hold yeah

copy you can probably get the bridge

to start moving real slowly forward now I'm it after four days the

AUV is finally in hand and on the way up

You got to hold it? All right. Back down a little bit.

That's cold, buddy.

After a very close call, the AUV is safe.

All right.

Coming up easy.

We're good.

Got it, Paul.

That's it.

I'm glad to have it on board.

It's been a rough four or five days, so it'll be nice to actually get a full

night's sleep instead of a few hours here and there.

With the critical gear now on board, the hunt for the wreck is back on.

The team can now press ahead.

After a near disaster, the team can move forward again.

But they're still 230 miles from where Shackleton's ship went down.

And in that area, the sea is still entirely covered in ice.

Shackleton and his ship drifted into this northwestern part of the Weddell

in October 1915.

For ten long months, they'd been locked in the ice in a bitter struggle for

survival.

It's so damn cold.

If you don't have an elaborate safety net of equipment, you'll die.

Shackleton's only safety net is his.

But now the mounting pressure in the ice is breaking it apart.

They're in the ship. They can hear this ice moving against the ship. You hear

the creaking of the ship. You hear the pressure on the joints. You never know

the ship's just going to break apart.

The timber's beginning to crack and groan as they're like heavy fireworks

blasting of guns.

To see the pack ice move in and just squeeze the life out of that boat, it

must have been so trying and so depressing.

Mother Nature overwhelmed the mighty endurance.

Finally, Shackleton gives the order to abandon ship.

Their only hope was to take everything off that ship that they needed and put

on their rescue boats and then switch into survival mode.

The 28 men and 49 dogs can only watch as the endurance is

overwhelmed.

I can only imagine what it was like for him when he sat there.

stood on the ice and watched it just slowly implode.

Just a piece of his heart and soul probably went down with that ship when

went.

The ship disappears beneath the surface.

Shackleton and his men are truly alone.

I think they're much more lonely than I was on Apollo 13, because I had

communication with home.

Shackleton, he didn't have a radio, he didn't have Wi -Fi, he didn't have a

phone.

He was alone.

Shackleton's dream of becoming the first man to cross Antarctica is ultimately

crushed, along with his ship.

This is where his real battle for survival begins.

Back on the Agulhas II, Menson searches the records.

He believes these hold the secret to understanding how the ship sank.

You see in this picture here, the stern rose up 45 degrees, the bow went even

further down, and then she just slid and was gone in minutes.

All this clutter that you see in this picture here, all these masts and yards,

all that was still attached to the ship when it went down, and that would have

imposed an incredible drag on the sinking ship. That would have kept her

and would, to some extent, have slowed her down.

As Minson Bound reviews records about the endurance, suddenly there's another

crisis aboard the Agulhas II.

While rescuing the AUV sub, a critical part of the underwater robot has

under the extreme pressures 10 ,000 feet below the surface.

The robot's electronic brain is now mangled metal.

We've had a catastrophic failure.

We don't have all the electronics to rebuild the ROV.

I don't know what to say, really.

I just don't.

The aluminum pod was designed to withstand pressure nearly three miles

surface.

But Steve thinks the combination of extreme cold and a material flaw has

it to be crushed.

This is what we found. One half of the bottle has pancaked into the other half

of the bottle. There were quite substantial electronics, and they've

entirely crushed.

This is the first time in my career that I've ever seen this firsthand.

This is an example of what hydraulic pressure can do.

It's a bitter blow for expedition archaeologist Manson Bound.

The worst possible news.

I mean, to lose our electronics like that, there is no replacement. We can't

in spare parts.

There's nothing we can do.

This is what I was going to use to study the wreck, really eyeball to eyeball

with the wreck.

The hunt for Shackleton's endurance is stalled, thanks to equipment failure.

And there's a new problem.

The bridge learns their closest route to the wreck site is now totally blocked

by ice.

Analyzing daily satellite photographs, ice pilot Freddy Luketeller is hunting

for another way in.

We can actually approach the third site coming right around all the ice and

approaching it from the southeast.

With a bit of luck, we can be cautiously optimistic.

The new plan is to go the long way around.

Skirt the pack ice and then head toward the wreck site.

I'm excited about it. Can't beat the smile off my face right about now, you

know. Finally getting there.

To be in the same area where he was at and to finally locate that ship is

just...

An excitement that I really can't explain.

Finding Shackleton's ship is the ultimate goal of this expedition.

But 100 years ago, losing the endurance was just the start of a journey that

would make Ernest Shackleton a legend.

Stranded on the ice, Shackleton's men face impossible odds.

But they have blind faith in the man they call the boss.

There's this classic quote, and to paraphrase it, when the chips are down

all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton.

Shackleton orders his men to march for land 200 miles across the ice.

Shackleton has these massive...

with full wooden boats on them loaded with supplies.

You could come up to a massive pressure ridge, blocks of ice as big as semi

-trucks that are shoved up into the air 10, 15, 20 feet. And so as you're

approaching it, it basically is a wall of ice.

I mean, I don't like to say things are impossible, but I don't know how they

would get over that stuff.

The men cover only nine miles of pack ice in a week.

Shackleton realizes reaching land is impossible.

To make matters worse, they're slowly starving to death.

As food supplies run out, they're forced to eat the only thing that brought them

joy in the wilderness.

Their dogs.

The companionship that the dogs provided the team was quite significant.

That moment must have been hard on an emotional point, but it

was also a mirror of how extended they were and how precarious life was.

If you're shooting your dogs, you're on the down and outs.

Ben. As the ice thereon drifts closer to the open ocean, it starts to break

apart beneath.

And they have to rush onto their boats. They have to throw their things on their

boats. They have to get into these boats with everything they need to survive.

They have no choice.

but to go from relative safety to basically certain death.

Shackleton has finally left the ice that's trapped him for 15 months.

But now he faces a new danger, the open Weddell Sea.

Even today, this sea is nearly impossible to navigate.

As the crew of the Agullus II is finding out, she's

stuck in the ice, just like Shackleton's ship.

We're stuck. We're in a whiteout.

The ice is well over three meters thick, possibly even as much as five, and

we're way, way below zero.

In the early hours of the morning, the ship was brought to a standstill by

impenetrable fog.

The ice moved in around her and froze her in.

If the temperature drops further, the ice could trap the crew for days, and

harsh Antarctic winter is already barreling down on them.

But Devon's got an idea.

Well, we could do like Shackleton did on the Endurance when they got stuck in

the ice and had the whole crew run from one side of the vessel to the other

together to rock the ship free.

Instead of using Shackleton's method, Captain Bengu tries a different

Shifting a 40 -ton container of fuel using his crane.

We used it.

Heavy weight to create a lever for a ship to to heal or lift to port to

starboard

So

we're moving again You can hear the distinct difference in the sound here.

That's definitely ice scraping alongside the vessel as we're moving forward.

A century ago, Shackleton wasn't so lucky.

When he and his men are forced onto lifeboats, they have to battle freezing

winds and ice storms on the open ocean.

Shackleton sets out for a tiny island 60 miles away.

It's his final hope.

On the seventh day at sea, and barely alive, they miraculously spot land.

And when they saw Elephant Island,

Everybody cheered, and we pulled as hard as we could to make our landing.

It was a weird sort of euphoria because they hadn't made it home.

They had made it onto an inhospitable rock.

The first night there, what was left of their tents were just shredded in the

wind.

Humans were not meant to be there. The whalers didn't even come by there.

They are on a tiny, storm -battered pinprick of a rock.

Of course, food was very short.

We had very little except a little seal and penguin whenever they came up.

Shackleton knew the men could not survive.

Conditions would only get worse. He had to get help.

And he knew he had to go as quick as possible.

But the only way out is across the most dangerous ocean on the planet.

507 days after he was first trapped by ice, Shackleton begins the perilous

journey that will make him a legend.

Taking only five men, two barrels of water, and four weeks of food rations,

launches their largest lightboat.

There's a picture taken by Hurley with a little brownie camera, with a little

camera he had.

That picture scares the bejesus out of me.

This tiny...

back of a boat, them all waving bravely at them as if to give them

encouragement.

Most of them must have felt they're never going to make it and we're never

to be saved.

Shackleton's plan is to head to the island of South Georgia, 800 miles

the Southern Ocean.

The Southern Ocean is probably...

One of the most treacherous bodies of water on this planet.

It's not uncommon to have winds in the 50, 60, 70 mile an hour, swells up to

foot. The water temperature is just a little above freezing.

It can sink a vessel in seconds.

It's like going up a hill or a mountain and you go up and up and up and then you

reach the top and then you go down and you skid down.

The odds are stacked against him.

But Shackleton knows if he doesn't make it to land, all his men will perish.

He finally spots the island of South Georgia.

They made it. They had made the toughest crossing in the world in a vessel.

Never made that crossing before. There was a sense of euphoria.

From his landing point at King Harkin Bay, the closest settlement is a whaling

station 30 miles to the east.

But blocking his path now is a towering mountain range.

The mountains were covered with snow and ice.

And to get some sort of traction on the snow, they took nails out of the boat

and pounded them through the bottom of the chute.

After climbing for 36 hours, Shackleton finally

limped into civilization.

When Shackleton told his story of what they'd been through, no one at the

whaling station, they couldn't believe it. It was every step of this story was

beyond belief.

But, of course, it wasn't over for Shackleton then.

He had to go back and save the people on Elephant Island.

This is the point where she went down.

The Agulhas II has finally broken through to the exact coordinates of the

Endurance wreck site.

It's a major achievement.

Only a handful of trips have ever been here.

It feels great. I was up on the bridge till late.

I only got two hours sleep. I'm shattered. But, you know, at the same

really happy.

But, you know, we still got to find it.

To actually be here and able to be part of the search is very exciting.

I'm ready for it.

We're going to launch from where we're at, all the way down to 3 ,000 meters to

the bottom.

Hopefully everything works well, according to plan, and we'll see what

Existing scans reveal that the Agulhas II is floating above a vast underwater

plain.

Here, the seafloor plunges down 40 times the height of Niagara Falls to a depth

of 10 ,000 feet.

This is the deepest zone of the Weddell Sea.

And the crew believes this plane is the final resting ground of Shackleton's

ship.

Ten thousand feet down, somewhere in these icy depths,

lie the remains of Shackleton's ship.

Remarkably, the water at the sea floor is below 32 degrees.

It doesn't freeze solid because of the vast pressures at depth.

Depth combined with the super cold water, any bacterial activity will be

down. This is all pretty good news for the preservation of the endurance.

All they've got to do now is launch the AUV sub to hunt it down.

The propellers bite, and the AUV dies.

That was a successful launch for the first mission to search for the

If all goes well on the mission plan, we should be recovering in about 42, 43

hours.

Everything's looking good at the moment, and we're going to keep our fingers

crossed, keep thinking positive, and keep pushing forward.

Shackleton II pushes forward.

After battling across 800 miles of open sea for two weeks, he finally reaches

the island of South Georgia.

But, of course, it wasn't over for Shackleton then. He had to go back and

the people on Elephant Island.

Shackleton strives tirelessly for four months to break back through the frozen

sea.

At last, he approaches Elephant Island.

And as he's going ashore, the men on the island are seeing that their rescue

boat is here, and they're starting to come out from under the shelter.

And Shackleton is counting one, two, three, four, all the way up until he's

counted everyone.

And... He looks to Worsley and says, they're all there, they're all alive.

And the emotion that he had at that time had to be just overwhelming.

To bring everybody on his expedition back home alive was probably one of the

greatest adventure achievements that we have in our history books.

On board the Agulhas II, the crew hunting down Shackleton's wreck has

major blow.

Thirty hours into the dive, the AUV that's scanning the sea floor has gone

missing.

The multi -million dollar machine has likely located the wreck, but AUV

operators Devin and Blake have lost contact with it.

If they can't reconnect, they'll never find out what's below.

The AUV could be anywhere.

And temperatures are dropping fast.

The ice floes are closing in.

As conditions worsen, the team makes a difficult call.

It's tough to search for an AUV in this kind of situation.

You know, Mother Nature, you know, at some point puts her foot down and lets

know who's boss.

For now, the team halts their mission and reluctantly heads home.

We were always up against the ice. That was always the enemy for us, just as it

was for Shackleton.

And yeah,

it's beaten us also.

Three years later, undeterred by the same freezing seas and howling winds

defeated both Shackleton and the team on their previous attempt, The Agulhas II

returns on a new expedition.

This time, the crew realizes their dream.

One of the most remarkable stories of survival and determination.

10 ,000 feet below the surface of Antarctica's Weddell Sea.

The secret the ocean has kept hidden for over 100 years.

They find the Endurance, resting on the sea floor, nearly two miles down.

As Manson anticipated, the ship is largely intact, standing upright, its

wood well -preserved by the cold.

The team leaves the wreck untouched.

Endurance remains in its final resting place, a chilling monument to the

singular courage, of Ernest Shackleton and his men.

Whenever I'm out there in a tricky situation, climbing or where things

be going my way, I take a bit of Shackleton and I plug it in and I'm

Sir Ernest Shackleton, he would persevere.

And that is the power of Shackleton's story.

Shackleton resonates today because of keeping his men together, keeping

morale up, doing the impossible, and then saving them.

That's endurance.

The astonishing story of the endurance.

Its loss at sea and its recent discovery inspires the world. Like Shackleton

himself and his men.

The team on the Agulhas II refused to give up.

And now, after a century, we finally know the last chapter in this mystery.

Shackleton's lost ice ship is lost no more.

I'm Lawrence Fishburne, and thanks for watching History's Greatest Mysteries.