Understanding the drift of Shackleton’s Endurance during its last days before it sank in November 1915 using meteorological reanalysis data

• Main Authors: Vos, Marc, Rabenstein, Lasse, Kountouris, Panagiotis, Shears, John, Suhrhoff, Mira, Katlein, Christian
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: Antarctic; Shackleton; The Antarctic; Weddell; Weddell Sea; Worsley; Antarc*; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/hgss-2022-9; https://hgss.copernicus.org/preprints/hgss-2022-9/

On 5 December 1914, Sir Ernest Shackleton and his crew set sail from South Georgia aboard the wooden barquentine vessel Endurance , thus beginning the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition to cross the Antarctic continent. However, Shackleton and his crew never reached land because the vessel became beset in the sea ice of the Weddell Sea in January 1915. Endurance then drifted in the pack for eleven months, was crushed by the ice and sank on 21 November 1915. Over many years, various predictions were made about the exact location of the wreck. These were based largely on navigational fixes taken by Captain Frank Worsley, the navigator of the Endurance, three days prior to, and one day after the sinking of Endurance . On 5 March 2022, the Endurance 22 expedition successfully located the wreck some 7.8 km southeast of Worsley’s estimated sinking position. In this paper, we describe the use of meteorological reanalysis data to reconstruct the likely ice drift trajectory of Endurance for the period between Worsley’s final two fixes, at some point along which she sank. This approach yields a mean 24-hour position error of 4 to 10 km, and a predicted location some 2 to 5.3 km from the position at which the wreck finally was found. In spite of numerous sources of uncertainty, these results show the potential for such methods in marine archaeology.