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It was a dream.

It was a treasure hunt.

But I don't think that Shackleton thought

anything about the material side.

What the treasure can buy isn't the answer.

It's the finding of it,

the looking for it.

Shackleton once wrote to his wife,

said that he cannot describe the excitement

of seeing places and things

that no human's ever seen before.

Beloved.

This will be my last letter

before I go south into the unknown.

I have not the slightest doubt that we will get through.

Why we go, I cannot say.

What the impelling force is that makes explorers,

I cannot describe.

January the 21st, 1915.

Our position is disquieting.

The fall in temperature caused the small pools

around the ship to congeal.

It looks as though there was a possibility of us freezing in

and becoming part of the floes that menace us.

Each step taken into the unknown

unfolds a page of mystery.

And as long as there is any mystery on this globe,

it is not only man's right,

but his duty to try to unravel it.

The idea of exploration,

going for the prize,

and then taking one step beyond,

is in all of us.

We could hear

her beam snapping,

broken as easily as matchsticks

by the irresistible strength of the ice.

I like doing what's never been done before.

As Shackleton said,

difficulties are just things to overcome.

As long as we can come out

of this predicament with our lives,

we shall not grumble.

And please, God, we will succeed.

- Morning, Nico. - Morning, Mensun.

Lasse.

Well, it's amazing, I mean,

it was taken from space.

When we have sunny weather, we can get the optical imagery

which is super helpful for navigation.

Probably, we will move on this area

because we are already here.

We've got to provide all the support we can

to the AUV guys.

They are gonna be working 24/7

flat out to survey that search box.

We've only got 12 days.

If the weather holds up,

we may be able to get a 10-day extension.

But we have to get out before the ice reforms and refreezes.

We are near the latitude and longitude,

given by Worsley, the captain of Endurance,

as the place where he estimates Endurance sank.

Success awaits. Dive one, boys. Let's go.

The Endurance is the most storied wreck

of all time,

perhaps even more so than the Titanic,

which went down only two years before the Endurance set sail.

I've been working on shipwrecks all over the world,

from South China Sea in the east

to Caribbean in the west.

Shipwrecks of all kinds, all periods.

The wreck of an ancient Greek ship

found inside a live volcano off the coast of Sicily

could prove one of the greatest finds of the century.

A shipwreck is, is just this huge artifact.

It's all there.

I mean, the best time capsules

in the world are shipwrecks...

and shipwrecks are all about people.

This is, um, Frank Worsley.

He was the captain of the Endurance

and, uh, Harry McNish, the carpenter,

James Wordie, the geologist, Greenstreet.

So it's all to do with their diaries.

The story of Shackleton

is really to be told in the diaries.

I've read all the diaries and most of them are not published.

This is first book I ever read about Shackleton.

I... it's-it's... I carry it with me.

It was a prize book that was given to me for,

believe it or not, attendance at Sunday School.

Growing up in the Falkland Islands

felt like the continent of Antarctica

was my backyard,

just several hundred miles away.

The great man himself, the boss,

Shackleton.

And I carry this with me.

All good.

Yeah, all good.

Uh, good luck with this, Dan,

but is this a needle in a haystack?

How, how optimistic are you?

Well, I-I think it is a needle in a haystack.

It's at 3,000 meters

beneath the surface of the Weddell Sea.

The Weddell Sea is one of the hardest places

on earth to operate.

The hope is, we do find the shipwreck,

the Endurance shipwreck,

and it connects us to an incredible story.

It's probably the most isolated,

the most difficult shipwreck on earth to find.

So this expedition is really on the frontiers

of science and geography.

My job is to try and spread the story

of what's being done here on the Agulhas

all over the world.

It's to channel the spirit of Shackleton and Hurley,

his photographer, to tell the world what they were doing.

But use modern platforms and tools,

like the internet, like social media.

We're still talking about Shackleton

because this is the greatest tale of survival,

of leadership, of teamwork in history.

And it's a story about failure.

This was the great age of exploration.

We hadn't descended to the deepest depths of the ocean.

We hadn't yet climbed the highest mountain of the world.

Polar explorers in this period

were global celebrities.

They were the rock stars.

Shackleton was on four expeditions

to the Antarctic.

He found himself in 1901

as the third officer on Scott's great expedition,

the Discovery expedition.

Shackleton must've been

a very special character even then,

in his 20s, to persuade Scott,

as a Royal Navy officer, to take this man

from the merchant marine with him,

all the way to the Antarctic.

They suffered terribly.

They got back by the skin of their teeth.

Shackleton in particular was in a very bad way.

Shackleton is sent back

as an invalid to the UK,

which he was terribly embarrassed by.

He never forgot or forgave Scott

for invaliding him out of Antarctica.

But Shackleton was able, in 1907,

to secure enough funding for his own expedition

to Antarctica, called the Nimrod Expedition.

Again, he was trying to get to the South Pole,

and he got to within 97 miles.

He could've taken the prize, but he didn't

because he knew if he went that last bit of distance,

that men under him would've died.

I cannot think of failure.

Yet I must look at the matter sensibly

and the lives of those who are with me.

It must have been a very difficult decision

for him to have made.

After the conquest of the South Pole

by Amundsen,

who, by a narrow margin of days only,

was in advance of the British expedition under Scott,

there remained but one great main object

of Antarctic journeys:

the crossing of the South Polar continent

from sea to sea.

Shackleton managed to convince enough people

the greatest Antarctic journey was yet to be done.

People might have reached the South Pole.

But the greatest journey was crossing

the Antarctic continent

from one side to the other.

Shackleton then found his ship.

The Endurance was built in Norway

between 1911 and 1913.

When Shackleton purchased the ship,

he changed her name to Endurance

because it reflected his family motto:

"By endurance we conquer."

He then assembled a crew.

Shackleton just sent a letter to the newspaper.

And he would say, anyone's able to apply.

He got 5,000 applicants, including three women.

Some were scientists who wanted to take part

in the kind of scientific elements of the expedition.

Some were sailors.

I had joined the expedition by accident.

One night, I dreamed that Burlington Street

was full of ice blocks

and that I was navigating a ship along it.

An absurd dream.

But sailors are superstitious.

And when I woke up next morning,

I hurried down Burlington Street.

A sign on the door post caught my eye.

It bore the words "Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition."

I turned into the building. Shackleton was there.

The moment I set eyes on him,

I knew that he was a man

with whom I should be proud to work.

He took one scientist,

a meteorologist who had just returned

from an expedition to Sudan.

There was one small matter

about which I was concerned:

it was whether I should take my banjo with me.

His reply was emphatic. "Certainly," he said.

So my banjo, the same one on which I had played

to the audience in the Sudan, formed part of my baggage.

He didn't require any Antarctic experience.

He took one guy because he said he looked funny.

He was looking for character.

He was looking for toughness and versatility.

So Shackleton ended up with a crew

of 28 men, including himself,

lots and lots of dogs to pull sleds,

which no one ever had any experience of doing.

And a cat.

On the other side of Antarctica,

he was sending another ship.

And they were gonna try and lay food dumps

so that Shackleton and his men could pick them up

and avoid starvation

as they made the second half of their journey.

It was the very eve of World War I.

He did offer his ship

and its crew to the service of the nation.

He sent a telegram to Churchill,

but Churchill replied,

"proceed," and he did.

The Endurance arrived

at Grytviken Whaling Station in South Georgia

on 5th of November, 1914.

The whaling captains at South Georgia

confirmed the extreme severity of the ice conditions.

The whaling skippers advised us

to delay our start as late as possible.

Shackleton ignored that advice.

He couldn't return home.

There was a war on,

he'd lose his crew, he'd lose his funding.

He didn't have the reputation

that would survive another failure.

And I think he dragged his men down there on a doomed quest

because he couldn't bear to go home.

Shackleton left South Georgia

on the 5th of December.

Two to three days after leaving,

they were in the ice.

The ice conditions that year were very bad indeed.

They headed down towards the shore of the Weddell Sea.

Ice conditions got worse and worse.

They got to within a hundred miles,

or one day's sailing, from their destination,

of Vahsel Bay.

But then, on the 18th,

they became ice-bound.

His expedition had failed.

He wanted to walk across Antarctica.

He hadn't even set foot on Antarctica.

There you can see just on the horizon there, can't you?

- Yeah. - So there's a lot of sea ice

over there then.

Yes.

It's now minus eight degrees,

and you can see looking at the open patches

that it is hardening up.

The ice gets all hard,

and old and gnarled and mixed and hummocked,

and at that stage, we are struggling.

And for me, it's a make-or-break situation.

Mensun Bound is a legend.

He is one of the world's greatest marine archeologists.

But at this point, he doesn't want

his career to end in failure.

We tried once before.

In 2019,

we came to Antarctica to search for the Endurance.

...we're within its range.

It felt like, you know, my whole life had been,

uh, converging upon that moment.

It was an incredible feeling.

The excitement, the... exhilaration.

And then of course, it all went wrong.

We actually got to the wreck site, much to my amazement,

because we had very, very tough, uh, ice conditions.

We managed to put down the AUV,

AUV working perfectly fine.

But after 30 hours,

it suddenly stopped transmitting.

We'd lost it, and we had no idea what had happened to it.

We searched for three days, didn't find it.

Uh, massive failure.

The AUV we lost cost millions of dollars.

And, all that planning, years of work,

all down the tube, you know.

It was literally one of the worst moments of my life.

You know, I never expected that, uh...

I'd have a second chance

to go looking for the Endurance,

that is for sure.

We learnt from our failures in 2019

that we needed a, a different underwater drone

to search the seafloor.

It was Nico's choice to attach this brand-new vehicle

to the surface using a fiberoptic tether.

Nico's, in my mind, one of the best subsea engineers

anywhere in the world

As the vehicle surveys the seabed,

we'll see the Endurance appear in real time

on the navigation screen.

Robbie, that's the AUV

off the hook.

Okay, AUV in thrust mode, all yours, Chad.

When you're in the Weddell Sea,

the traditional sub-sea methods don't work

because the ice rules.

The massive challenge is of launching under the ice

and searching on the seafloor at 10,000 feet.

And no one had ever done this before.

It was complete-- completely new

in terms of sub-sea technology.

We've got 15 nautical miles to run to the site.

Should be there between 1700

to 1800 hours tonight.

And what about the ice conditions, Lasse?

There's areas of,

of open water opening up,

but it will be a little denser at the site.

So whatever we do with the AUV operations,

the drift will be super important.

Because you have to park the ship

at the right side of the search window

to drift over the wreck site and not in the other direction.

In the Weddell Sea, we have an ocean system,

which is called the Weddell Gyre.

The sea ice goes clockwise like a huge circle.

On average, it drifts 20 kilometers a day here.

And even the ship will drift with the ice.

The ice was heavily and firmly packed

around the Endurance, extending in every direction

as far as the eye could see from the masthead.

As the weeks passed,

our drift was slowly but surely

taking us northwards,

our track on the chart showing a formation

like that of a drunken man's wanderings,

crossing and recrossing our own track.

My chief anxiety is the drift.

Where will the vagrant winds and currents carry the ship

during the long winter months that are ahead of us?

And will it be possible to break out

of the pack early enough

to attempt the overland journey next year?

Shackleton's gamble of racing south in 1914

and trying to beat the winter had failed.

He now had to survive a brutal winter

in the most inhospitable place on planet Earth.

On February 24th,

we ceased to observe the ship's routine

and the Endurance became a winter station.

Ice huts were built

on the floes around the ship,

and the dogs, each one, chained to a hut.

The working and training of the dogs was taken in hand.

Most of the public schools in England

helped the expedition to purchase the dog teams.

And we named a dog after every school that helped.

Shackleton insisted on optimism

above all else, and I think he was right.

Without that sense that you are gonna survive,

without that sense of purpose, you would give up,

you'd turn your face to the wall.

And so they organized life in a way

that would keep their morale up and keep them alive.

Hurley is a marvel.

With cheerful Australian profanity,

he perambulates the most dangerous

and slippery places he can find.

He snaps his snaps or works his handle,

turning out pictures of life by the fathom.

Shackleton was generations ahead

of what young people now know to be true.

If you haven't filmed it, it hasn't happened.

And so of course he took the latest,

cutting-edge technology, moving film.

He took a documentary maker with him.

I was in the wilds of North Australia at the time,

making a film of the primitive Aboriginal life.

A cable from Sir Ernest Shackleton

invited me to join the staff for his expedition.

I hadn't the remotest idea of what it might involve

nor had I applied for a post on the expedition.

However, Sir Ernest had long been my hero,

and I was going to follow him in anything

and to go anywhere with him.

Shackleton was desperate to get the story out there.

He lived and died by publicity.

Shackleton could never be confident of his funding.

He was always cobbling this stuff together.

But, underneath it all, he was hopelessly disorganized,

terrible with money.

To a certain extent, it was a pyramid scheme.

He'd get given 20 pounds here,

and he'd immediately have to pay, uh,

someone he'd owed it to over here.

I think Shackleton is best described by a keen observer,

fellow crew mate on the second trip to Antarctica:

He said he was a outstanding, plausible rogue.

Shackleton never really had

the standing that he wanted in British society.

He didn't come from the aristocracy,

he didn't go to university.

Shackleton grew up in Ireland.

His father was a farmer first of all,

and then he decided to retrain and became a doctor

and he moved the family to London.

Shackleton spoke differently.

He was terribly bullied at school,

when he went to school in London.

He was desperate to prove his worth.

He tried to make it as a politician,

no one voted for him.

He tried to make it as a businessman, it failed.

There were two Shackletons.

There was the public Shackleton

that could quote, he had a photographic memory

that could quote long lines of poetry:

Shakespeare, Tennyson, Browning at will.

He would provoke people to tears

and cheers in public meetings.

The private one was insecure.

He had terrible health problems.

He was wracked with nerves.

He wrote to his wife and he said,

"I find that this is too overwhelming."

Beloved, there are times

when I almost wish that I had not gone south

but stayed at home and lived a quiet life.

I suppose I am a domestic failure

and not the ideal married man.

I am just good as an explorer and nothing else.

But, uh, Emily stood by him all the way through.

Emily Shackleton said,

"You can't keep a wild eagle in a barn."

He must have been quite

a disappointed guy in some respects.

None of his plans worked out as he hoped.

But he had to keep going to Antarctica

because it was the only way he could stay relevant,

that he could stay famous.

So it was like a devil's bargain.

He had to keep going back

to the worst place on earth

to maintain his status at home.

Okay, Joe, the AUV levelin' out at, uh, the seabed.

[on radio] Alright, Roger that. Roger that.

Okay, guys. We're good to start mission?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely.

This is the one. Today's the day.

Just tab the rolls?

You are not so affected now.

Oh! We're moving!

- Good, making data? - Yeah.

- That's good. - The seabed.

The, the seabed is, uh, is really flat,

which is a very good point for us.

Through the depression like that.

It's the perfect condition for finding a wreck.

Exactly.

The only sonar data in the world of the site.

We are the first one. Yeah!

- Yeah! - Yeah!

Your stupid plan is coming together.

So let's try to review quickly,

with this vehicle on the seabed, what we will see.

The primary sensor is a side-scan sonar.

This is a low-frequency side-scan sonar signature

of a wreck which is roughly

the same size as the Endurance.

It may not look like much,

but this is what the Endurance will look like on the screen.

It will be two meters

below the surface, 40 meter astern.

Forty meters below the surface.

You will pull slowly when I say...

To go to Antarctica, you need an exceptional team.

I've been working with the people on my team

for almost 25 years.

So we've gotten to know each other and become very close.

We've got some pretty impressive projects under our belt.

We have several world records.

For me, Endurance22 is my first expedition to Antarctica and

this is the first time I've been back out at sea

since the death of my wife.

I lost Sévereine in 2017 to cancer.

This was one of the most difficult times of my life.

So going back out to sea is really good for me.

And for us, we're like a family.

I usually say I'm the big brother,

but they don't agree with that.

So yes, I'm the dad of this team.

If we find the wreck,

it will be the team success.

But if we fail, it will be my failure.

Because I was in charge.

About the middle of February,

the temperature dropped as low as 20 degrees below zero.

All precautions were taken to prepare the ship for winter.

But the Endurance's company refused to abandon

their customary cheerfulness.

Certainly a good deal of our cheerfulness

is due to the order and routine which Sir E establishes.

We had our own special duties to perform.

In my own case, I was kept quite busy

attending to four-hourly records of temperature,

noting atmospheric pressures, wind force, and direction.

Our cabins on deck began to get too cold

as the temperatures dropped lower.

So the cargo was cleared out of the tween decks,

and we built ourselves cubicles there

and lived down there throughout the winter months.

This was christened the Ritz,

the wardroom above being known as the Stables.

The Ritz served as an area in which members could relax,

read, play cards, and while away the time.

♪ It's a long way to Tipperary ♪

Our appetites were tremendous

and the kind of food we had a craving for

might make a little appeal to civilized tastes.

Seal blubber, for instance, was our greatest delicacy,

and I often used to eat it raw.

It is our custom to drink to sweethearts

and wives every Saturday night,

which all hands do with much fervor.

At midnight, we had cocoa and wished Sir Ernest

many happy returnings of his 41st birthday.

We said goodbye to the sun on May the 1st

and entered the period of twilight

that would be followed by the darkness of midwinter.

The disappearance of the sun is apt to be

a depressing event in the polar regions

where the long months of darkness

involve mental as well as physical strain.

A form of midwinter madness

has manifested itself,

all hands being seized with the desire

to have their hair removed.

It caused much amusement.

We resemble a cargo of convicts.

Greenstreet, the first officer,

at that moment, knocked at the cabin door.

He said to Shackleton, "The play can begin, sir,

whenever you are ready."

Shackleton said, "In five minutes,

you can go back and say so."

Greenstreet could never have guessed

that a few minutes earlier,

the Great Explorer had broken to me that tragic news.

He said, "The ship can't live in this, Skipper.

"It is only a matter of time.

What the ice gets, the ice keeps."

We would be cast homeless upon the dreary waste of ice

from which so few returned.

To the men, Shackleton was the cheery, happy chief

who was leading them in a great

and successful adventure.

And a few minutes later,

sure enough, we were in the Ritz

laughing heartily at one of the burlesques

that our men had become adept at producing.

The ship had become to them,

as to me, the center of the universe.

How would they be without the ship?

I mean, imagine being here

in a tiny little wooden boat.

No GPS, no... nothing.

And then the leader says, "Oh, by the way, boys, we're stuck.

And, uh, we're gonna spend the winter here."

You'd be like, "Ah, great,

well, my wife's gonna kill me."

Everything is absolutely perfect.

The vehicle is ready.

Everything is ready. The tether is ready.

However, the vessel is stuck in ice.

This is really frustrating.

We are not able to reach

the next position for the next dive.

And we are losing time.

Exercise patience.

Patience, patience. Yeah.

Yes, so they say.

That's, um, heli-helicopter fuel,

so it's got 20,000 liters of helicopter fuel in it.

They use a special technique where they're swinging

the container from side to side across the bow

to roll the ship and that then loosens it.

So they're bringing the container back on now.

And then they'll start moving forward.

I think we have over the next two days

a very stable drift in this direction,

but then something is happening, we have a shift,

and you see, like, every six hours

we get a new forecast.

So just to give you an idea of the uncertainties

we have to deal with.

The environment of Antarctica

is a very special place.

You're completely distant.

It's as if you're stepping out of the real world.

I've sort of lost count, but I think this is

my 25th expedition to Antarctica.

Going to Antarctica is very addictive.

You can, you can ask my wife about that.

Uh, it-it's something that once you've seen it,

you know, you-you've got this drive to always go back.

And Shackleton, you know, he also had this drive

to go back to Antarctica.

You'd be hard-pressed to find a guy

with more Antarctic experience than John Shears.

He was head of logistics for the British Antarctic Survey,

which is the British group responsible

for, um, Antarctic operations.

He's been awarded the Polar Medal

by Her Majesty the Queen,

which is the same medal that Shackleton was awarded.

I started doing expeditions

then when I was about 17, 18,

and then continued at university.

I come from a farming family in Devon, in England.

I was very close to my grandmother,

and my grandmother, um,

never had the opportunity t-to travel.

And my grandmother, as a small girl,

had gone into Exeter, to the museum there,

and they had an Antarctic presentation.

And she always remembered that.

That was the first time I heard

about Ernest Shackleton.

Gram was always wanting me and my two brothers

to get experience of what the world might be like.

And here I am, and I've been, you know, to the Arctic,

to the Antarctic in the space of two generations.

August the 1st, 1915.

At 10:00 a.m., the floe began to move in our vicinity,

driving tongues of ice below the ship

and heeling us over to starboard.

We felt like pygmies,

as millions of tons of moving ice crushed

and smashed inexorably all around us.

I kept on thinking to myself, how long can this last?

How long?

Every timber was straining to rupture.

The decks gaped. Doors refused to open or shut.

The floor coverings buckled, and the iron floor plates

in the engine room bulged and sprung from their seating.

Everything was in a state of extreme compression.

♪ Oh, I met with Napper Tandy ♪

♪ And he took me by the hand... ♪

They were listening to the gramophone

when it happened.

They felt this wave of pressure building.

It was like an earthquake,

ship shuddering as the ice pressed in.

Pressure throughout the day,

increasing to terrific force at 4:00 p.m.,

smashing rudder,

rudder post, and stern post.

The ship was making water rapidly aft.

I had the pumps rigged, got up steam,

and started the bilge pumps at 8:00 p.m.

We pumped three days and nights

without sleep,

but we could not pump her dry.

It was at this time

that a strange occurrence took place.

For some months, we had seen no emperor penguins.

Now eight of them made a sudden appearance,

walking slowly towards the ship.

We had always considered these birds

to be practically mute,

but on this occasion,

they proceeded to utter cries

that sounded like a dirge for the ship.

The effect of this death call was ominous and startling.

On October 26th, the end came.

All hopes of accomplishing our objective vanished.

Shackleton met the crisis

with complete composure.

He gave orders as though we were setting out

on just a sledging expedition.

But to Shackleton, not only was it

an incredibly dangerous development,

they were now in mortal peril.

But it was also a sign

of a complete failure of the expedition.

This is probably Shackleton at his lowest point.

I don't think it can get any worse.

It can physically.

But for Shackleton, I think this is the trough.

He knew this was the end of his dreams.

There was no protection to be had

from the angry world of snows and wind.

They had a tough first night.

They bedded down on the ice.

They drew lots for the fur sleeping bags.

They didn't have enough.

Three times that night,

our floe cracked dangerously under our tents.

Three times, we had to move.

For myself, I could not sleep.

I walked up and down in the darkness.

The task now was to secure the safety of the party.

He pivoted.

There was no more walking across Antarctica.

In that 12-hour period,

he completely flips his outlook.

And from that moment on, he is laser focused

on getting those men home.

At dawn the next morning,

Shackleton and Wild, like good Samaritans,

made hot tea for all hands.

This they took along to the inmates

of the various tents.

Shackleton made a characteristic speech,

the sort of speech that only he could make.

He told the men not to be alarmed

at the loss of the vessel

and assured them that by hard effort, clean work,

and loyal cooperation,

they could make their way to land.

This speech had an immediate effect.

Our spirits rose.

It was decided to try and march

across the floes to a small island

called Paulet Island.

It would be necessary to take the boats

as the last part of the journey would be by water.

So everyone started to prepare for the sledging journey.

Now a last change of clothing was issued.

The dress consists of Burberry overalls

over a suit of warm underwear, a pair of ordinary trousers,

and a thick sweater.

Shackleton decided to cut down

every ounce of superfluous weight.

Once more, he gave us the lead

when he threw away a gold watch,

a gold cigarette case, and several gold sovereigns.

I tore the fly leaf out of the Bible

that Queen Alexandra had given to the ship

with her own writings in it.

The order was that personal gear

must not exceed two pounds per man.

And this meant that nothing but bare necessities

were to be taken on the march.

It was shortly after leaving the ship

that I heard Shackleton calling for me.

"What's that, sir?" I asked.

"Your banjo," replied Shackleton.

This is the banjo that Shackleton saved

just before the ship sank.

He called it Vital Mental Medicine.

Next day, we started a march

to the westward.

The dogs dragged the stores on the seven smaller sledges.

I took charge of 16 men,

dragging our three boats placed on the larger sledges.

The boats weighed about one ton each with gear.

The going was frightful, and the labor was appalling

and our progress all too slow for the energy expended.

They didn't get very far.

Two days later, they gave up

and they established a camp.

Our new camp,

to which we gave the name Ocean Camp,

lay about a mile and a half distant

from the watery grave of the Endurance.

Well, the poor old dark room was crushed.

And we found it was beneath about six feet of mushy ice.

But what does one do when you have buried treasure

to the value of 20,000 pounds

beneath six feet of mushy ice?

I peeled off and in an instant,

I was in that mushy ice and roping for the cases.

The first case, I got out in quick time.

I took a breather and down underneath the ice again

and up with the second case.

The ship began to violently move

under the pressure of the ice.

So there was nothing else for us to do

but to make for the floe, just for our dear lives

as quickly as we could.

Shackleton returned to the ship

for his final visit,

and he took the flare gun.

Hurley, Wild,

and self went into ship,

said goodbye, fired a bomb in farewell.

It was Shackleton himself

who first saw the ship begin its slide.

He just saw the funnel just twitch.

We dashed onto the lookout platform

that had been erected.

And from there, we watched the death of the ship

that had carried us so far and so well

and that had put up such a brave fight

as ever a ship had fought.

Shackleton said quietly to the men,

"She's gone, boys."

Shackleton had drummed into them

by then that what he expected of every one of them

was optimism, optimism, optimism.

How could they not, at that moment,

think about what their chances of survival really were?

And, you know, it's got to be said,

chances of survival were pretty negligible.

Okay, let's find the Endurance!

We need to catch it now.

I don't want the other, uh,

the other shift to have it.

Okay, we called all the data?

Yeah, we're ready. Let's do this.

There's a kind of superstition in our profession.

that if you don't have faith in it it, nothing will happen.

So, despite everything.

we try to believe it and think,

"Okay, our luck's gonna change. We have to be able to find it."

- Sinking location. - Yeah. Ooh.

Ah, come on!

That's a shipwreck.

Come on, boys!

Open the bar! Open the bar!

Open the bar!

- Yeah? - Morning, Mensun.

- Some news? - Good news.

John!

We're gonna be gutted when it's a pile of boulders.

I'm just messing, this can't be, it's not possible.

This is it. This is the great moment.

We found the wreck of Endurance.

Are we quite... are we quite, quite sure?

Oh, geez. Yes!

I'm only gonna believe it when I see it.

- Yeah... - So about that point, precisely,

because the vehicle, uh, is low in batteries,

we have not been able to follow normal protocol

and make a video of the wreck.

So now, we have to secure the data...

- Mm-hmm. - ...on the next dive.

Um, hi, gentlemen.

- Hi! - Hello.

- Somebody please show me. - Yeah, yes.

- Oh, my gosh! - Just over there.

Look at that!

And she was just

400 meters north.

From the actual position that Worsley gave?

- Yeah. - I can see that,

I can't believe it. Worsley really was an ace!

- We can't believe it as well. - I am stunned.

Guys, thank you all.

This is just the best moment ever,

and I'm so pr-proud

and pleased to be able to share it with you.

Yeah. Hurrah.

Yay! Hoorah!

Mensun, I don't know about you,

but I've been swinging from optimism

to pessimism over the last...

Yeah, it was like that. Yeah.

But we're right over the spot,

right where Frank Worsley said he sank.

But that in all my life,

I've never known a wreck to be where it said it was.

You know, here it is.

What do you think, Nico?

I say that I don't know.

I have evidence but no proof.

I do not like gray area. I like black and white.

Sixty-five degrees,

sixteen and a half south.

Fifty-two degrees, four west.

No news.

Patience. Patience. Patience.

Our hope, of course,

was to drift northwards to the edge of the pack

and then, when the ice was loose enough,

to take to the boats and row to the nearest land.

February the 3rd,

the cocoa has been finished for some time,

and the tea is very nearly done.

Soon our only beverage will be milk.

The food now is pretty well all meat.

We had to catch penguins and seals first

before we could do any cooking.

Now, to do cooking, we had to make a stove.

We made a stove out of the funnel.

We-we used biscuit tins and, uh, a paint drum.

Well, it took me eight hours to cook a meal.

Between those eight hours, underneath used to melt,

and the stove used to topple over.

Well, I didn't mind that topping over

'cause I lost nothing because I just gathered up again

and put it back in the pot.

And they had to have it or go without.

The monotony of life here

is getting on our nerves.

Nothing to do, nowhere to walk.

That's the time when morale breaks,

when there's nothing whatsoever to do

and nothing you can do about it.

Then they experienced squabbling.

Tuesday, March the 28th.

This morning, there was quite a lot

of unpleasantness on rising.

Greenstreet got

his precious ration of hot milk spilt,

and he broke down.

Quietly, everyone gathered around

and poured out a tiny bit of milk

into his cup.

That really shows how on edge they all were,

but also it shows they looked out for each other.

Perfect.

Okay. Robbie, everything is secured

and all the slack is off the deck.

You're clear to dive.

Okay. Copy that.

Diving to a 100 meters first.

This dive could well be the difference

between a claim of finding a shipwreck

and seeing Endurance.

Are we...

going in for a quick inspection

or what is... what's the plan?

Yes, please.

Okay, I'll start turning around.

We feel we are on the target now?

Yeah, I think this is it.

This just looks like seabed to me, like...

Stop, stop.

Looks like a spoon

sticking out of something, don't it?

Look at the shape of that.

I think it's a rock.

You got marine growth here.

- Yeah. - Looks like a piece of wood.

I was gonna say it could be a heavy timber.

Could be a bit of planking.

It's true that the videos aren't extremely clear either,

but there's no wreck or ship to be seen.

I think there is no point to stay down here.

- Okay. - Yeah, I think, uh...

Continue the search.

Resume the search.

There's no doubt about it.

We have a big debris field.

It's manmade, it's from the wreck.

So it's part of the vessel. Not the vessel.

Yeah.

I felt a big crack in my head and in my heart.

I could hear Shackleton himself laughing his head off there

somewhere in the, in the background,

'cause we made fools of ourselves.

And suddenly, the clock that had stopped

just started again.

"Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick."

And we are back to racing against the clock.

Pull up!

You know, these, these side-scans

really can play you false.

We have made huge mistakes before in the past.

We, we found the submarine, but we didn't recognize it.

We thought it was wrong. That was...

- Uh, yes, yeah. - ...an expensive mistake.

Mm. Sometimes things don't go right

for you in life, you know.

I think we've all faced that,

and it's coming back from that adversity

and in 2019, it was a nightmare.

Absolute nightmare.

You put in your blog, Mensun,

you said that we came back with our tail between our legs.

- Oh, yeah. - I wouldn't have quite put it

in those words, but that's what...

- We did. - ...that's what you said.

And here we are.

And if sometimes you have to fail to succeed.

We had food only for four weeks.

We had nothing to keep out the biting cold

save linen tents.

We are rusting and wasting our lives away

while the whole world is at war,

and we know nothing of how it goes.

Owing to the shortage of food

and the fact that we needed all

that we could get for ourselves,

I had to order the dogs to be shot.

I shot Sirius today.

It went horribly against the grain

to put an end to this fine young animal,

which all the time was making joyous overtures to me.

My hand was shaking so much

that I had to use two cartridges

to finish him off.

Poor beast.

The youngest pups that had been born on board

were shot,

and so was Mrs. Chippy,

the carpenter's cat.

There was not much fun in eating

the tough old dogs,

but the little puppies were tender.

A casual observer might think

the explorer a frozen-hearted individual,

especially if he noticed the mouths watering

when tears ought to be expected.

Hunger brings us all to the level of other species.

On the 9th of April, their ice floe splits again,

and it's untenable.

They cannot live on these little slivers of ice,

and they take to the boats.

Getting into these open boats

is one of the most terrible things you can do.

Shackleton took command of one boat,

Hudson the smallest,

and I was in charge of the third.

Right from the very start,

we ran into trouble.

We were passing down a long, very wide lead,

Shackleton in the leading boat,

when we heard him shouting and pointing to port.

I couldn't believe my eyes.

The ice was rushing towards us just like a tidal wave.

We shouted to the boat astern and pulled for our lives.

And both of us cleared the point of impact.

The journey got very much

more difficult after that.

Men get terrible diarrhea,

their drinking water's contaminated,

their clothes are freezing solid on them.

Their feet are completely submerged

in freezing seawater.

Hopes were running high

as to the noon observation for position.

Worsley snapped the sun.

It was a grievous disappointment.

Rather than making progress,

they found to their absolute dismay

that they were 30 miles to the east

of where they'd started from.

Just given the way the wind is pushing,

Elephant Island quite quickly becomes

the most obvious destination.

Sea and wind increase and have to draw up

onto an old, isolated floe and pray to God

it will remain entire throughout the night.

No sleep for 48 hours, all wet, cold, and miserable.

When we woke next morning,

there was a huge sea running.

The ice had all closed round us,

and we were being battered by the huge floes.

There seemed no chance of saving our lives.

Then, to make matters worse,

a crack appeared right through the center.

- We thought this the very end.

And we were, all of us,

at the point of shaking hands and saying,

"Well, cheerio, lads. This is the end.

A great game while it lasted."

When a miracle happened.

The ice started to recede from our floe

by some trick of the current

and left us in a big patch of open water.

Just one of these million-to-one chances

that sometimes come along at the right moment.

Shackleton was now very concerned

about the condition of many of his men.

All of us had swollen mouths

and found that we could hardly touch food.

We were dreadfully thirsty now.

We found that we could get momentary relief

by chewing pieces of raw seal meat

and swallowing the blood.

But thirst came back with redoubled force,

owing to the saltiness of the flesh.

They spot Elephant Island

in the afternoon.

They cannot risk approaching at night.

So they choose to tie the boats together

and wait out at sea.

I was seasick during this night

and very miserable,

sodden, frozen, and sick.

McLeod growled continually all night.

Men cursed each other,

and the sea, the boat and everything curseable.

That is when Perce Blackborow

first got very bad frostbite on his toes.

They're in a state of extraordinary misery.

Frank Wild said of that night that half of the expedition

were insane, helpless, and hopeless.

We have extended the search to the north

and for now we have found nothing.

Here, there is a part of the Endurance.

Okay? This is the only thing that we can say.

So now we have to do

the maximum of coverage in the minimum of time

and try to cover the entire search box.

So what do we have to do to find the wreck?

Oh, I don't know.

Huh? What else?

So I discussed with the Falklands

Maritime Heritage Trust

about giving us an extension.

And, uh, they said yup,

we can take another 10 days on the charter.

But all depending on your judgment as captain

whether, uh, it's safe enough for us to stay on site.

I'm not opposed to that.

The ice dictates what needs to happen.

So, so we are thinking that we review it

on an hourly basis with you.

The only thing is,

I just have to make sure that we don't stay here

and become a, another Shackleton.

The coast of Elephant Island presented

a barrier of sheer cliff and glacier faces,

wild and savage beyond description.

You would never have recognized

the crowd of men that landed on Elephant Island

from those that got into the boats

a week previous, haggard and drawn,

split with frostbite from exposure.

We had aged 20 years in a week.

Many suffered from temporary aberration,

walking aimlessly about,

others shivering as with palsy.

They were laughing uproariously,

picking up stones and letting handfuls of pebbles

trickle between their fingers,

like misers gloating over hoarded gold.

Conceive our joy on setting foot on solid earth

after 170 days of life

on a drifting ice floe.

The first thing to do was have a drink.

If I live to be a hundred, I shall never forget

the feeling of that hot drink

going down my throat.

I wished that I had a neck like a giraffe

so as to prolong that exquisite feeling.

"Thank God I haven't killed one of my men,"

Shackleton said in our first confidential talk

on Elephant Island.

Shackleton had always insisted

that the ultimate responsibility

for anything that befell us

was his and his only.

His attitude was almost patriarchal.

This may have accounted for the men's

unquestioning devotion to him.

Today, our first job was to build a house.

We piled up some rocks, turned the two small boats

upside down on top of them,

and packed ice and snow into the cracks.

It was a dreadful little hut. We had no light at first.

Then we made a little lamp

by stewing down some seal blubber

with a piece of twisted bandage for a wick.

The lamp burned with a tiny smoky flame

that only made the darkness seem darker.

But Shackleton very quickly realized

that they couldn't stay.

It wasn't a place where the whalers went.

Nobody was going to rescue them there.

To remain meant death

from slow starvation or from exposure.

The situation was desperate.

But again, our leader rose to the occasion.

He decides their only realistic way of escape

is to take with him five fit strong sailors

and then use the prevailing winds

to undertake an 800-mile journey

across the most terrifying stretch of ocean

on the planet, towards South Georgia,

where they can seek help and hopefully come back

and rescue everyone they've left behind.

"I'm afraid it's a forlorn hope," he said.

"I don't ask anyone to come

who has not thoroughly weighed the chances."

The moment he ceased speaking, every man volunteered.

Five of us were chosen.

To give himself slightly better odds,

he did make some changes to the biggest

and most seaworthy of their lifeboats,

the James Caird.

He put extra planking on the side.

They covered some of the open boat with canvas.

They filled up the bottom of the boat with ballasts,

and they put the mast of one of the other boats

down the keel to stop it flexing so much.

April 23rd.

The Caird is nearing completion

and God willing leaves tomorrow.

It is a dreadful thing

to face your shipmates.

Men who have been through thick and thin with you.

And to realize that in all probability

it is for the last time.

And to know that if you fail to come back,

they will starve to death.

By 12:30, the Caird hoisted sail

to three ringing cheers from the shore.

We all pretended to have high spirits

as we cheered and waved to our comrades.

Even though in our hearts, we felt strangely forlorn.

Woo!

Cold. Cold. Cold. Cold.

The ice is stopping it.

Just freezing.

It was bitterly cold.

And the guys are working out there,

and they're not complaining, they're just getting on with it.

But, you know, they're getting tired,

and it's, um, and it takes it out of you.

Come on, come on, come on.

Just a bit of debris...

with an arrow would be good.

We're not finding anything at all.

And the temperatures are gonna go basically,

off a cliff in the next few days.

And we'll have to call the search off.

It's getting a bit,

sorta like disheartening now, isn't it?

- Yeah. - It's just like, pff.

Okay, we'll call that end of line now. Yeah?

Okay. End of line.

So it was not there.

Y-you know, your hopes go sky-high,

and then, you know, it's like a right hook to the chin,

and, pompf, down you go.

We are running out of days, aren't we?

- Yeah. - Yeah.

On the 24th of April, Shackleton sets off,

and he wasn't a day too soon.

The following day,

Elephant Island was surrounded by ice.

They'd have been trapped there for another winter.

The ocean south of Cape Horn

in the middle of May is known to be

the most tempestuous storm-swept area

of water in the world.

So small was our boat

and so great were the seas that often our sail

flapped idly in the calm

between the crests of two waves.

A great sea would break over us,

pouring water in streams over everything

and making us feel we were under a waterfall.

Gradually, the constant soaking caused our legs and feet

to swell, turn white,

and lose all surface sensibility.

Over on Elephant Island,

22 men were waiting for the relief

that we alone could secure for them.

Their plight was worse than ours.

Well, the hut was cramped

and dark and dirty,

and we were dark and dirty too.

We had no bread or biscuits

and sometimes days and days would go by

without seal or penguin appearing on the island.

I think that few people in the world

have been as hungry as we were and have survived.

Life here is almost beyond endurance.

We pray that the Caird may reach South Georgia safely

and bring relief without delay.

Worsley tells them the course

to steer if they want to hit South Georgia.

If they sailed past South Georgia,

there was nothing till the coast of Africa

thousands of miles ahead.

They would perish somewhere in the South Atlantic.

At midnight, I was at the tiller

and suddenly noticed a line of clear sky.

I called to the other men that the sky was clearing.

And then a moment later, I realized that what I had seen

was the white crest of an enormous wave.

I shouted, "For God's sake, hold on!"

I had never encountered a wave so gigantic.

But somehow the boat lived through it,

half full of water.

We bailed with the energy of men fighting for life.

Not until 3:00 a.m., when we were all chilled,

almost to the limit of endurance,

did we manage to get the stove alight

and make ourselves hot drinks.

They started seeing some positive signs.

They saw seabirds

they knew didn't venture that far from land.

At 1 o'clock in the afternoon,

we saw the peaks of South Georgia straight ahead.

But when they got to South Georgia,

they were on the wrong side of the island.

Where they wanted to be was the other side,

which is where the whaling stations were.

Shackleton thought that Vincent

and McNish were at death's door.

He could not risk sailing all the way around South Georgia.

They stopped in the dying light

'cause they couldn't go in shore

without being able to see properly.

Suddenly, the wind shifted on shore

and increased to a gale

of the most extraordinary violence.

The mast bent with the force of it,

and at one moment, we thought

it was going to snap.

The bow planks on each side opened and closed

so that long lines of water squirted into her.

The chance of surviving

the night seemed small.

I think most of us had a feeling

that the end was very near.

Then, just when things looked their worst, they changed.

The wind suddenly shifted.

I have marveled often at the thin line

that divides success from failure

and the sudden turn that leads from certain disaster

to comparative safety.

Then finally, on the 10th of May,

they threaded through some rocks.

They landed and they dragged themselves up the beach.

One more night at sea and they would've certainly perished.

It is remaining...

- Elusive. - Yep.

The light blue line is the area covered,

and the remaining large area is the south channel

on the next dive it will be most probably on this block

and we start to move to the east.

And then what?

Do you think we are going to stay further to the south?

For the moment my order is

cover the box.

Okay.

This is it. We-- on this dive, right here,

we're gonna find the Endurance.

We have only a few days left.

Winter is coming.

Among all the people on board,

we started to discuss a lot

about how does Worsley know

where the sinking position was.

He just estimated.

He hadn't been able to get a site for three days before,

and it wasn't until the day after the ship sank

that he was able to get his next fix,

so what was the direction of drift in between?

That was the challenge.

We just came up with this idea now

during the cruise to use a dataset called ERA-20.

It's a big European project to, um, calculate the climate

and weather of the past 100 years

based on weather station data and physical models.

Then we calculated the drift trajectory,

uh, the Endurance might have had

around the 21st of November.

So then the sinking location would have been here

in the southern edge of the box.

In addition, John and me, we had the idea

to look into the meteorological observations

of Hussey from that day.

The Hussey's observations are great

because they are real observations,

but they don't cover the night.

So I just threw the data into a model product

from re-analysis, which is basically a,

a weather model run backwards.

And actually we have quite some confidence

that between the 18th and the 22nd,

uh, the Endurance somehow went south.

That Worsley had no means of, of observing it.

So we do have to cover that southern part

of the search area in any case,

which is where you're pointing us to.

Nico, you're very quiet though.

You're just ingesting it all.

Yeah.

You know, I am like a old computer.

When I'm thinking too much, the screen freezing.

Good?

For me, for the sub-sea operation point of view,

the real question is why we are discovering this now,

and not a year ago?

Thirty percent of the box left

and now he makes this wonderful flipping prediction.

If it's not in, i-i-i-it's not

in a place that we surveyed already.

So what he's basically said is it's somewhere

that we haven't surveyed or somewhere else.

Right. That-- i-it's is not a prediction.

I can make that prediction.

I didn't go to flipping university

and learn about flipping which ice goes best

in me gin and tonic.

What's our percentage complete now? Roughly?

Uh... 73%.

Starting to run out of some area here.

Now that we have, um,

a drift forecast, we have to link this

with the reality of the debris field that we have.

So if we apply the drift model

on the large area of debris of the wreck,

then the wreck might be anywhere from here to here.

But all this area has already been covered except...

Except for that little spot there.

Except this little spot.

So we have to search on this area.

The more the days go by, the more I think,

"How can you be part of Shackleton's story and give up?"

Shackleton was now

on the remote, uninhabited side

of one of the most isolated islands on earth.

He had to get round to the whaling stations.

I realized that the condition,

particularly of McNish and Vincent,

would prevent us putting to sea again.

The alternative was to attempt crossing the island.

The island of South Georgia

had never been crossed by anybody.

The whalers regarded the country as inaccessible.

Shackleton knew that the mountain crossing

was the desperate gamble of dying men.

Worsley and Crean were coming with me,

and after consultation, we decided to leave

the sleeping bags behind

and make the journey in very light marching order.

Our equipment was three days' food

slung around our necks in a sock,

the old Primus lamp,

an ax to cut steps in the ice, my little compass,

and a blueprint map of South Georgia.

The carpenter assisted me

by putting several screws in the sole of each boot,

providing a grip on the ice.

He decided to make a nonstop march

as soon as the weather was clear.

Life on Elephant Island was grim.

The men suffered terribly.

Very often, we were almost down

to our last meal when something would turn up.

A seal or some storm-driven penguins

and we were safe again for a few days.

Today, McIlroy operated

on Blackborow,

amputating all toes of the left foot.

We managed to sterilize instruments pretty well.

We had no sterilized overalls to get into.

We merely stripped to our vest.

I was one of the few who witnessed

the operation, and it was most interesting.

The poor beggar behaved splendidly,

and it went through without a hitch.

At 2:00 a.m. on Friday, May the 19th,

the weather was fine and clear,

and the moon was shining brilliantly.

Shackleton said, "We will start now, Skipper."

Shackleton insists on breaking trail,

being the first to go through the snow

so others behind would have an easier trek.

After two hours steady climbing,

we were 2,500 feet above sea level.

The bright moonlight showed us

that the interior was broken tremendously.

Then, as daylight came, the fog thinned and lifted.

With the complete clearance of the mist,

we saw, to our sharp disappointment,

what we had taken for a frozen lake

was an arm of the sea.

So we retraced our steps down the long slope

that had taken us three hours to climb.

Shackleton said, grimly,

"We shall have to go on to the next, boys."

This happened three times.

We had now been

on the march for over 20 hours,

only halting for our occasional meals.

At one point, Crean and Worsley

dropped off to sleep during one of their pauses.

Shackleton says he had this irresistible urge

to join them in sleep,

but he knew that sleep meant death.

After five minutes, I shook them

into consciousness again,

told them that they had slept for half an hour,

and gave the word for a fresh start.

And then, on the night

of the 19th of May,

they were high up in the mountains

and they realized they were gonna die.

It was far too cold and exposed up there.

The situation looked grim enough.

Fog cut off our retreat. Darkness covered our advance.

It was useless to continue in this fashion.

Shackleton said, "We've got to take a risk.

We'll slide."

Slide down what was practically a precipice

to meet... what?

Still, it was the only way.

Shackleton sat on the large step he had carved,

and I sat behind him.

Crean did the same with me

so that we were locked together as one.

Then Shackleton kicked off.

We seemed to shoot into space.

They simply tobogganed off

into the unknown.

We finished in a snow bank.

We had shot down a mile in two or three minutes.

We picked ourselves up and shook hands all round.

"It's not good to do that kind of thing too often,"

said Shackleton.

At 6:30 a.m.,

I thought I heard the sound of a steam whistle.

I dared not be certain.

Seven o'clock came,

and we listened intently.

Then, clear across the mountains

in the still morning air

came the sound of steam whistles

of the whaling factories bidding the men.

It was the first signal of civilization

that we had heard for nearly two years.

Our old friend, Captain Sørlle,

who had entertained us two years previously

when the expedition had touched Stromness Bay,

failed to recognize us as we stood on his doorstep.

I said, my name is Shackleton.

He was extremely pleased to see us

and at once took us into his house.

We had baths, our beards came off,

and we felt like human beings once again.

The very following day,

Worsley went round in a small steam ship

to pick up the other three men

who were still on the west side of South Georgia.

On the Tuesday, we started out

in the same whaler

to try and reach my comrades on Elephant Island.

We met the pack ice 60 miles north

of the island.

To attempt to force the unprotected steel whaler

through the masses of pack ice

would have been suicidal.

To admit failure at this stage was hard,

but the facts had to be faced.

Thrusters enabled, all yours.

Copy.

Today's the day.

And if it's not, maybe tomorrow.

It's sad that we don't found her yet,

but, uh, yeah, there is still five boxes remaining.

So our next mission will be D10

and D09.

If the ice had been more stationary,

it could work, but there's, as it--

Come on.

Oh, yeah. Oh, come on, Ellie.

Come on, give us more. Give us more.

Give us more.

It's got some height.

Yeah, yeah.

It's got some height.

Nico?

- Go ahead. - Can you join us

in the survey room, please?

Yes.

That's the Endurance.

That's really interesting.

- Morning, Nico! - Morning. How are you? You okay?

I'm good. Another beautiful day.

There you go, my friend.

That's a beauty.

There you go, my friend.

I suggest that we have a dive with camera.

Verification.

John Shears, John Shears, John Shears, Nico.

Nico, Nico, go ahead.

Yes, please. John, could you join me on the bridge?

And if you find Mensun, could you come

with Mensun on the bridge please?

Okay, I'll come straight up.

Yes, please bring your,

bring your Mensun with you, please.

Shackleton made not one,

not two, not three but four attempts to get back

to Elephant Island to rescue his men.

He was turned back by storms and frozen seas.

The wear and tear of this period was dreadful.

In those four terrible months,

I saw deep lines appear in his face,

and his hair turned gray.

On the fourth attempt, the Chilean government

came nobly to the rescue.

They lent Shackleton the little steamer Yelcho.

This time, providence favored us.

I found as we neared Elephant Island

that the ice was open.

We were sitting down to a magnificent meal

of old seal bones, seaweed, and limpets

when, from the man on duty outside,

we heard a sudden yell.

"Wild!" he shouted, "Wild! There's a, there's a ship.

Haven't we better light a flare?"

We forgot all about our wonderful meal.

We made one dive for the door.

Those who couldn't get through the door

went through the sides,

and the wonderful meal was kicked over in the rush.

Suddenly, everyone ran down the beach

waving and shouting ecstatically.

Shackleton used his binoculars to count the number of men.

Only when he was certain he'd counted

all the right number of people

could he relax and know

not a man would be left behind.

He put his glasses back

in their case and turned to me.

It sounds trite, but years literally seemed

to drop from him as he stood before us.

I woke up this morning saying, today's the day.

- Yeah... - I can smell it.

Yeah.

Come on, you say that every day.

- Good time? - Yeah, yeah.

- Hey, Mensun. - Hey, Nico.

- So Mensun, John... - Yeah.

...I would like to introduce the Endurance.

Ohh, yes! Oh!

- Oh! - Brilliant.

Absolutely brilliant.

- Well done! Yeah! - Oh, my gosh.

I was saying, I was saying to Mensun on the ice.

I said it was gonna be a good day.

I said it was gonna be a good day.

The way you were looking, I thought,

"They've lost the AUV."

That's what I thought.

Big kiss.

Good morning!

It's so beautiful! Oh, my goodness, I can't believe it!

The AUV has been broadcasting back

the first images from the seabed,

and Endurance looks unbelievable.

It's all in one piece.

Researchers made

a stunning discovery.

The ship Endurance finally found.

It's the most extraordinary find.

The Endurance was found at 3008 meters under the sea.

It's a once-in-a-lifetime discovery.

One of the biggest deep-sea mysteries of our time

finally solved.

My grandmother... oh, she'd be, uh,

she'd be so proud.

So, so proud.

And so, so...

So part of what I do is, um,

is that sort of inspiration from, from her.

From, uh, Gram.

We were given a welcome

none of us is likely to forget.

The Chileans cheered us,

and we cheered ourselves hoarse in reply.

When we landed, they welcomed us so heartily

that they nearly pushed us into the sea again.

Shackleton's last journey into the Antarctic

was a failure,

but it was a glorious failure.

That's Shackleton's cabin there,

right there.

Oh, wow, we got the binnacle right there.

Oh, my God, the compass guard, you can see it.

- Yeah. - The tin mug.

- Yeah. - Plates.

Plates. Oh, and there's the flare gun.

- Yes. - Wow.

- Yeah. There's a boot. - The boot.

Yeah, you see, it's even got the buckle. Right there.

And if you look at the picture,

conceivably, that could be Wild's boot.

Look at that. Identical, isn't it?

You must be very, very proud of your guys, Nico.

- Yeah, I am. - This is incredible.

Shackleton said that when you go to the poles

you're touch by a kind of magic,

and you're changed forever.

We lived long, dark days in the south.

We lived through slow dead days of toil,

of struggle, dark striving, and anxiety,

days that called not for the heroism

in the bright light of day,

but simply for dogged, persistent endeavor

to do what the soul said was right.

I return to the wild again and again

until I suppose, in the end, the wild will win.

There is the fascination of striving

after the almost impossible.

When they got back,

the First World War was raging.

It just wasn't appropriate for Shackleton

to have his moment in the sun.

Nearly all of them signed up

for military service straight away.

Tragically, two of them are killed.

Several others are badly wounded.

Shackleton himself joined the military

in a logistics role.

When the war ended,

he finally had his moment.

He began touring and lecturing.

The film South was released, and it was a great success.

Shackleton had one more expedition left in him,

and in 1921, he went back to South Georgia,

but he died of a heart attack in early 1922.

It is an old cliché

that Shackleton never achieved any of the things

that he set out to do.

And it's true, he didn't.

But that was not what Shackleton was about.

Shackleton was about man's urge

to be always pushing to expand his boundaries,

always striving for the next thing,

always reaching for the horizon.

That was Shackleton.

Shackleton was buried here

on the 5th of March, 1922.

And exactly a hundred years later,

on the 5th of March, 2022,

we found his ship, the Endurance,

on the seafloor of the Weddell Sea.

I think Sir Ernest

would be amazed and probably also rather jealous

of what we have achieved and slap our backs and laugh

and applaud loudly our efforts as a team.

When you walk away from here,

reflect on what you've done and remember,

we're a symbol of how people can achieve

the greatest of challenges if they trust and work together.