Wreckage of Shackleton’s Last Ship Found

A team from the Royal Canadian Geographical Society just found the wreckage of the Quest, Sir Ernest Shackleton’s last ship, in 1,280 feet of water off the coast of Labrador. “Finding Quest is one of the final chapters in the extraordinary story of Sir Ernest Shackleton,” said John Geiger, head of the Society.

One of the best, and bravest, seamen of all time, Shackleton is celebrated for saving his 27-man crew after their boat, the Endurance, was trapped in ice and sank in the Weddell Sea during an expedition to Antarctica in 1916. The crew at first lived on the ever-shifting polar ice, and eventually took to their small boats to reach the nearest land on deserted Elephant Island six days away.

But after realizing that the chances of being rescued there were probably less than zero, Shackleton took five men on an open 20-foot boat and sailed 720 nm to a whaling system on South Georgia Island. He then went back to rescue the men left behind on Elephant Island. Upon his return to England, Shackleton was lionized as a hero in the age of Antarctic exploration.

Sonar scan of Quest wreckage. Royal Canadian Geographical Society.

Shackleton wanted to go back to the Antarctic, and in 1921 he took over Quest, a wooden-hulled, 111-foot schooner-rigged steamship built in Norway in 1917. It had the most up-to-date equipment at the time, including a wireless radio, electric lights, and even an electrically heated crows nest. Eight men from his Endurance crew joined Shackleton for the return on Quest. Shackleton died on board in the South Georgia Island harbor; he was just 47 years old.

Quest changed hands often, and served as a British rescue vessel and minesweeper in the Second World War. It was hunting seals 15 miles off the coast of Labrador when it some ice and sank on May 5, 1962. The entire crew was rescued.

It took the crew from the Geographical Society just five days, using state-of-the-art sonar, to find the wreckage.