Original subtitles

LAURENCE FISHBURNE: Tonight on "History's Greatest Mysteries,"

an in-depth look at a thrilling 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.

NEWS ANCHOR 1 (VOICEOVER): And a remarkable discovery

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

NEWS ANCHOR 2 (VOICEOVER): Researchers have discovered

the British ship called Endurance, the vessel that

launched one of the most remarkable stories of survival

and determination.

NEWS ANCHOR 3 (VOICEOVER): That led

to one of the most challenging shipwreck searches in history.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE: Fraught with its own peril, the discovery

came after years of planning and a daring mission that

cost millions of dollars.

AUV in the water.

Like a torpedo.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE: 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.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE: I'm Laurence 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.

[theme music]

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): 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.

South side straight up the starboard.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): Down here, the water

is so cold the wooden ship is likely perfectly preserved.

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.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): Maritime archaeologist Mensen

Bound is heading up the search.

He's got 40 years experience excavating shipwrecks.

But finding the Endurance is the ultimate challenge.

MENSUN BOUND: The 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.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): This expedition

will face the same risks and dangers that Shackleton did

a century ago.

But today's team has come prepared.

The ROV has the tension.

You can release it.

And it's just going to go under.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): Steve Santamore

leads one of the elite teams of sub sea explorers.

STEVE SAINT AMOUR: So our job will

be to document the condition of the wreck on the sea floor.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): 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.

A 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 spacecraft.

You know, it's just that remote.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): 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.

STEVE SAINT AMOUR: 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.

Through there and there.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): An ex-British Navy engineer,

he's been working on robot subs for 12 years.

DAVE O'HARA: For me, personally, it's a bucket list job.

The shipwreck side of things 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.

OK, guys.

Just let her be able to start the hydraulics.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): 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 Mensun Bound is investigating

nautical charts and the ship's original log,

kept meticulously by Shackleton's Captain Frank

Worsley.

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

MENSUN BOUND: 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.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): Using the data,

Mensun calculates a target 1,200 miles away

across the treacherous Weddell Sea.

EDWARD J. LARSON: 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.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): 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 1/2

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.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): In 1914, two years

after the sinking of the Titanic,

British Explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton heads south.

ERNEST SHACKLETON (RECORDING): I believe

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

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

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): 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 the first person there.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): 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.

CONRAD ANKER: Shackleton and his 27 men,

they sailed off what we knew of the world.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): But Shackleton will never

even make landfall.

Here, at the end of the Earth, Shackleton's ship,

the Endurance, will sink in a disaster that will capture

the world's attention.

Fully loaded, the Agulhas II finally

sets off, ready to take on the Weddell Sea.

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

so many dreams.

It feels really like my my whole life has just come down

to this moment.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): 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 Bukta, the crew is zeroing in on the wreck site.

On deck, Louisiana native and former Air Force engineer Devon

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 autonomous underwater vehicles or AUVs.

DEVON JAMES: It's basically a drone just

like an aerial drone, but we use it in the ocean.

So this is used all over the world

to survey the sea floor without a operator going

below the surface.

Coming to you.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): Also working on the subs

is Chad Bonin.

Like Devon, he's ex-military.

Forward.

On it.

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

We were hand-picked to come onto this job.

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

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): Despite the challenges

of sending their AUV subs under the ice,

Chad's got a good attitude.

Long as we're layered up, we're

OK, 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 hopes rest on the Agulhas II.

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

this ship is designed to smash through ice up to 3 feet thick.

A double haul 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.

MARK O'REILLEY: This is one of two [inaudible],, 6,000

horsepower available on each.

And that will give us enough power

to break through one meter of ice at 7 miles per hour.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): The Agulhas II

is built for the worst conditions on the planet.

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

Captain Freddy Lighthelm is the ice pilot.

Part of the South African crew, he has 15 years experience

in the Weddell Sea.

FREDDIE LIGHTHELM: 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 at.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): 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 victor.

And you can see that this iceberg is at a distance of 8.8

miles.

Sometimes you could get 100 targets on the radar at a 12

mile range.

And you'd try to then just skirt as much as you can.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): To reach the wreck site,

the Agulhas 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.

EDWARD J. LARSON: When Shackleton took his ship

into the Weddell Sea, he knew there was a tremendous risk

that he'd never make it out alive.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): 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 previously?

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

This is the original design for the Endurance.

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.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): Her bow is over 4 feet thick.

The keel or spine of the ship is 7 feet of solid oak.

And to stop her being ripped apart by ice,

her hull is cloaked in a wood called

green heart, so durable and strong that it's heavier

than iron.

It is extraordinarily hard.

It's so hard, you can't even drive a nail into it.

But this is what Shackleton needed, because it

is resistant to the kind of wear, and tear, and abrasion

that this hull is going to have to withstand once it got

into the Antarctic.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): 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 ice.

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 ship worm.

Ship worm can be incredibly destructive to wooden ships.

And they are voracious.

They just eat anything and everything in no time at all.

They can be up to two feet long.

And they just eat, eat, eat, eat.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): Recent experiments

have revealed that ship worms can't survive

in the freezing Antarctic waters.

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.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): 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 floe.

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.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): At the wreck site,

the AUVs will dive down and use sonar

to scan the seabed for 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.

CHANNING THOMAS: There is a lot of pressure.

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

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): Two years of planning

and tens of millions of dollars rests on the AUV sub doing

its job right.

DEVON JAMES: We're being extra cautious before we put it

in the water.

Once we launch it, there's no turning back.

CHAD BONIN: All right.

Let's go get us a successful launch.

All right.

Crank up hydraulics.

Yeah.

We definitely don't see this in the Gulf of Mexico.

MAN (ON RADIO): [inaudible].

MAN: AUV in the water.

CHAD BONIN: Like a torpedo.

All right.

Looking good.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): All systems are go.

Stay back here and monitor.

Roger that.

Ready to dive?

30 seconds till it dives.

Come on, cowboy.

Good job.

Good job.

It's done a good job.

It's a great relief to finally get it under.

We're on our first mission.

Now we can pull forward a little more.

AUV's getting down to 300 meters right now.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): While the team tracks the AUV

sub, expedition archaeologist Mensun 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.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): Just 60 miles from the South

Coast of the Weddell Sea, the ice pack

freezes solid around Shackleton's ship.

The Endurance is trapped.

LEONARD HUSSEY (VOICEOVER): The temperature suddenly dropped

from 20 degrees above 0 to 20 degrees below.

The whole sea froze over.

And we froze in with it.

Of course, we had no explosive to blast our way out

but we just had picks and shovels.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): 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.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): And in the six month

long Antarctic winter, just staying

alive is nearly impossible.

ERIC LARSEN: 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.

CONRAD ANKER: The wind's unrelenting and the snow driven

like needles into your face.

SCOTT SHACKLETON: I was at the South Pole.

It was so cold.

I removed my glove for just about a 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.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): 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.

ERIC LARSEN: While it may look like a land mass,

it's floating on water.

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

doing, that affects that surface.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): Strong currents and winds

in the Weddell Sea spin the entire ice pack

in a giant clockwise rotation.

For 10 months, the Endurance moves with the ice.

MENSUN BOUND: This is the route that the Endurance was carried.

We can follow the route very precisely.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): 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, the people on the Endurance

thought the same thing would happen to them.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): Out on deck in the early hours

of the morning, the team is waiting for their AUV sub

to return from its test run.

But there's a problem.

I don't know what the hell is going on.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): They've lost all contact

with their brand new multimillion dollar sub.

BLAKE HOWARD: 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.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): 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 multimillion dollar loss they can't take.

We're going to search that area right there.

The AUV has two flashes on it.

And the general idea is to get the ROV down deep,

turn off all our lights, and hopefully see those beacons.

MENSUN BOUND: Right now, I'm very worried.

From day one, we recognized that our nemesis

was going to be the ice pack.

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 from 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 feeling for everybody.

It was extremely exciting for her to actually talk back

to us.

And it gave us a direction to head towards.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): The team continues pinging

the sub to triangulate its location.

Then they pick up a response.

That was almost definitely a hit,

so it's got to be within range.

MENSUN BOUND: Compared to where we were two hours ago.

Yes, sir.

Exactly right.

So we're getting there.

What are we looking at?

3 meters to 7 meters, Captain?

Yeah.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): To reach the sub,

the Agulhas must get closer, penetrating a 20 foot thick ice

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 floe starts to break apart.

DAVE O'HARA: The AUV is about here, about 200 meters away.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): Each strike

releases colossal ice chunks bigger

than the size of a house.

By the time they're done, the ship's

smashed away 114 football fields worth of ice.

CHANNING THOMAS: We're going to launch the ROV.

We're going to go in and locate it.

And basically, they're going to drag her out.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): Across the ship,

all eyes are glued to the live feed.

DAVE O'HARA: Right now we are at six and 1/2 meters.

And under the ice.

MAN: Hey.

Is that an AUV?

DAVE O'HARA: And we've got the AUV visual.

MAN (ON RADIO): Roger.

Tell the bridge we got a vis.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): Binding

the AUV is a huge relief.

But now they need to break it out.

You can see the end of the SUV with the prop,

so it's definitely in a crack.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): Dave

has to grab the AUV with the robot arm.

DAVE O'HARA: All right.

So you're pretty much going to have to fly me into it.

Come on, Bubba.

Slow, slow, slow, slow, slow.

As soon as we started the move, the fish dropped away below us.

We got to go chase a fish down.

I can't walk in there, but I'll try again.

Ugh.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): At this depth,

the weight of water pressing down on the AUV

is equivalent to two jumbo jets.

Pilot Dave O'Hara is finding that fishing at this depth

is far from easy.

The hook has to hold.

DAVE O'HARA: Yeah.

Copy.

You could probably get the bridge

to start moving real slowly forward now I'm in.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): After four days,

the AUV is finally in hand and on the way up.

MAN (ON RADIO): Visual on the AUV.

We got a hook.

All right.

Back down a little bit.

Woo.

That's cold, buddy.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): After a very close call,

the AUV is safe.

CHAD BONIN: All right.

Coming up easy.

Got it, Paul.

That's it.

I just 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.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): 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 Sea in October 1915.

For 10 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.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): Shackleton's only safety net

is his ship, but now the mounting pressure in the ice

is breaking it apart.

EDWARD J. LARSON: 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 if the ship's just going to break apart.

WALTER HOWE (VOICEOVER): The timbers

began to crack and groan.

It was they were like heavy fireworks and 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.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): Mother nature overwhelms

the mighty Endurance.

Finally, Shackleton gives the order to abandon ship.

CONRAD ANKER: Their only hope was to take everything

off that ship that they needed, and put it on their rescue

boats, and then switch into survival mode.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): 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 it went.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): The ship

disappears beneath the surface.

Shackleton and his men are truly alone.

I think they were 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, didn't have a cell phone.

He was alone.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): 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, Mensun 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 upright and would, to some extent,

have slowed her down.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): As Mensun Bound reviews records

about the Endurance, suddenly there's

another crisis aboard the Agulhas II.

Pod's gone.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): While rescuing the AUV sub,

a critical part of the underwater robot

has imploded under the extreme pressures

10,000 feet below the surface.

The robot's electronic brain is now mangled metal.

We've got 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.

Yeah.

I'm speechless.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): The aluminum pod

was designed to withstand pressure nearly three miles

below the surface.

But Steve thinks the combination of extreme cold

and a material flaw has caused it to be crushed.

This is what we found.

One half of the bottle has pancaked into the other half

of the bottle.

They were quite substantial electronics.

And they've been 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.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): It's

a bitter blow for expedition archeologist Mensun Bound.

The worst possible news.

I mean, to lose our electronics like that,

there is no replacement.

We can't fly in spare parts.

There's nothing we can do.

This was 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 Lighthelm is hunting for another way in.

We can actually approach the search site

coming right around all the ice and approaching it

from the southeast.

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

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): The new plan

is to go the long way around, skirt the pack ice,

and then head toward the wreck site.

CHAD BONIN: I'm excited about it.

You 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.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): 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

and all hope is gone, get down on your knees

and pray for Shackleton.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): Shackleton orders

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

Shackleton has these massive sleds with full wooden boats

on them loaded with supplies.

And 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.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): 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 things that brought them joy

in the wilderness, their dogs.

CONRAD ANKER: 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.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): Then as the ice

they're on drifts closer to the open ocean,

it starts to break apart beneath them.

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.

ERIC LARSEN: They have no choice but to go from relative safety

to basically certain death.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): 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 Agulhas II is finding out.

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

MENSUN BOUND: We're stuck.

We're in a whiteout.

The ice is well over 3 meters thick, possibly

even as much as 5.

And we're way, way below 0.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): 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 the harsh Antarctic winter is already barreling down

on them.

But Devon's got an idea.

DEVON JAMES: 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.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): Instead of using Shackleton's

method, Captain Bengu tries a different solution,

shifting a 40 ton container of fuel using his crane.

CHAD BONIN: It sounds we're moving again.

You can hear the distinct difference in the sound here.

That's definitely ice scraping along the side of the vessel

as we're moving forward.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): 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.

MAN (VOICEOVER): On the seventh day at sea and barely alive,

they miraculously spot land.

WALTER HOWE (VOICEOVER): And when they saw Elephant Island,

everybody cheered.

And we pulled as hard as we could to make our landing.

EDWARD J. LARSON: But it was a weird sort of euphoria

because they hadn't made it home.

They had made it onto a 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.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): They

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

LEONARD HUSSEY (VOICEOVER): Of course, food was very short.

We had very little except a little seal

and penguin whenever they came up.

EDWARD J. LARSON: 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.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): 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, he launches their largest

lifeboat.

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 speck of a boat, them all waving bravely at them

as if to give them encouragement.

Most of them must have felt they were never going to make it

and we're never going to be saved.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): Shackleton's plan

is to head to the island of South Georgia, 800 miles

across the Southern Ocean.

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 100 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.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): The odds

are stacked against them.

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,

and a vessel never made that crossing before.

There was a sense of euphoria.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): From his landing point at King

Haakon Bay, the closest settlement is a whaling station

30 miles to the east.

But blocking his path now is a towering mountain range.

EDWARD J. LARSON: 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 shoe.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): After climbing for 36 hours,

Shackleton finally limps into civilization.

EDWARD J. LARSON: When Shackleton told his story

of what they'd been through, no one in 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.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): 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 ships 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 time, I'm 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.

CHANNING THOMAS: 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 happens.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): Existing scans

revealed that the Agulhas II is floating

above a vast underwater plane.

Here the sea floor 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.

10,000 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.

MENSUN BOUND: The depths combined

with the super cold water, any bacterial activity

will be slowed 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.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): The propellers bite and the AUV

dives.

That was a successful launch for the first mission

to search for the Endurance.

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.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): Shackleton, too,

pushes forward.

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

he finally reaches the island of South Georgia.

SCOTT SHACKLETON: But of course, it wasn't over for Shackleton

then.

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

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): 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 1, 2, 3, 4, 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.

JAMES LOVELL: 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 suffered a major blow.

30 hours into the dive, the AUV that's scanning the sea floor

has gone missing.

The multimillion dollar machine has likely located the wreck,

but AUV operators Devon 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 you know who's boss.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): For now, the team

halts their mission and reluctantly heads home.

MENSUN BOUND: 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.

LAURENCE FISHBURNE (VOICEOVER): Three years

later, undeterred by the same freezing seas

and howling winds that 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.

NEWS ANCHOR (VOICEOVER): One of the most remarkable stories

of survival and determination.

NEWS ANCHOR (VOICEOVER): 10,000 feet below the surface

of Antarctica's Weddell Sea.

NEWS ANCHOR (VOICEOVER): 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 Mensun 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.

CONRAD ANKER: Whenever I'm out there in a tricky situation

climbing or where things might not be going my way,

I take a bit of Shackleton and I plug it in.

And I'm like, yeah, 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 Laurence Fishburne.

And thanks for watching "History's Greatest Mysteries."