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tonight on history's greatest mysteries, an in-depth look at a thrilling recent discovery.

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As Ernest Shackleton's long-lost ship endurance is finally found, more than a century after

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it was trapped in polar ice and sank into the frigid waters of the Antarctic.

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It's a remarkable discovery 10,000 feet below the surface of Antarctica's Waddell Sea.

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Researchers have discovered the British ship called endurance, the vessel that launched

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one of the most remarkable stories of survival and determination.

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

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

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mission that cost millions of dollars.

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

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

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The initial expedition to find the endurance came tantalizingly close to locating it, only

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to nearly suffer the same fate.

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I'm Lawrence Fishburne and tonight's mystery, what really happened to Shackleton's lost ship?

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What secrets can the wreck hold?

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

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and his brave crew?

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

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Antarctica.

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The most extreme place on Earth.

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Temperatures reach 100 below.

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And whips across it at 200 miles per hour.

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This frozen continent surrounds the South Pole.

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It's a vast land entirely covered in ice.

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

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The endurance.

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

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

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

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Flying in from across the globe is an international team of ship hunters, explorers and scientists.

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Two years in the planning and over $250 million of cutting edge technology make them think

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they can pull off a world first.

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

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Maritime archaeologist Mensen Bound is heading up the search.

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He's got 40 years experience excavating shipwrecks.

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But finding the endurance is the ultimate challenge.

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The endurance is, to my mind, the most famous wreck of all time.

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She's up there with the Titanic.

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

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

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

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But today's team has come prepared.

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The RV has the tension. You can release it. It's just going to go under.

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

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

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Based in Maryland, his team has found missing plane wrecks

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and most famously, surveyed the Titanic.

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

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

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and how difficult it is to get here.

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This is the equivalent of going to Mars and looking for, you know, the wreckage of spacecraft.

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You know, it's just that remote.

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To help him search, Steve's got a secret weapon.

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

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This two million dollar bottom weighs in at over 6,000 pounds.

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

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It's mission, to dive to the seabed and explore the wreck.

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And so one of the things that we do, you know, to prepare for the mission is go through, double check all the connections and tighten up hardware.

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

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He's through there.

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In there.

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

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

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

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Watching guys find Titanic.

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

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And I think that's the same with endurance.

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

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

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But first they've got to find it.

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

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To find the exact spot to search, wreck archaeologist Menson Bound is investigating nautical charts and the ship's original log,

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kept meticulously by Shackleton's captain, Frank Worsley.

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These record endurance his position on the day she sank.

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It gives us the coordinates, latitude and the longitude.

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

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This is where she sank. This is X marks the spot.

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Using the data, Menson calculates a target 1200 miles away across the treacherous Weddell Sea.

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The Weddell Sea is a churning bed of sea ice.

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This sea ice breaks into pieces and it floats around and it keeps running into each other, throwing up pressure ridges.

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And you never know when it's going to turn totally solid again.

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The expedition is also in a race against time.

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The Weddell Sea is full of ice year round.

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But as winter approaches, the ocean around the continent freezes over.

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Impassable sea ice, covering an area one and a half times the size of the United States.

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

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Anyone going into that area with a ship is putting their ship and their crew in jeopardy.

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In 1914, two years after the sinking of the Titanic, British explorers are earnest shackleton heads south.

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

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

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It's the golden age of polar exploration.

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

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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.

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And he wanted to be one of the first, the first person there.

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Shackleton's aim, to make history by crossing the entire Antarctic continent, from coast to coast, for the first time.

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A hundred years ago crossing Antarctica would be more difficult than us going to the moon today.

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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.

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

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But Shackleton will never even make landfall.

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Here, at the end of the earth, Shackleton's ship, the endurance, will sink.

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

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Fully loaded, the Agullus II finally sets off, ready to take on the Wettel Sea.

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

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

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

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

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is making good progress.

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Now 1500 miles from her starting point, at Penguin Booktut, the crew is zeroing in on the wreck site.

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On deck, Louisiana native and former Air Force engineer Devin James is part of a second elite team hunting the 100-year-old wreck.

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

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Two autonomous underwater vehicles, or AUVs.

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

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So this is used all over the world to survey the sea floor without a operator going below the surface.

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Come and tell you.

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Also working on the subs is Chad Bonnet. Like Devin, he's ex-military.

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Forward. Roger.

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

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We were handpicked to come onto this job, so there's a lot of pressure to complete the task.

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Despite the challenges of sending their AUV subs under the ice, Chad's got a good attitude.

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As long as we're layered up, we're okay because we're from South Louisiana, it's usually hot weather, you know.

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

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The expedition's hopes rest on the Agullus II.

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

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

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A double hull of extra-thick steel protects the Agullus II.

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And in the engine room, second engineer Mark O'Reilly is pushing her four engines to the limit.

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These deliver 12,000 horsepower.

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This is one of two prop shops. 6,000 horsepower available on each.

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And that will give us enough power to break through one meter of ice at seven miles per hour.

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

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

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Captain Freddie Lugtello is the ice pilot.

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Part of the South African crew, he has 15 years experience in the Weddle Sea.

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If we should hit any sea ice here at 15 knots, it could possibly cause heavy damage to the vessel.

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So we are continuously looking out.

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

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

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But unlike the Titanic, the Agullus II has an arsenal of modern navigational tools.

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This is us here, and this is our speed vector.

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

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

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and you would try to then just skirt as much as you can.

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To reach the wreck site, the Agullus II has been sailing around the northern edge of the ice pack.

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

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

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When Shackleton took his ship into the Weddle Sea,

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he knew there was a tremendous risk that he'd never make it out alive.

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Caught on camera by photographer Frank Hurley,

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the endurance picks her way through hundreds of miles of pack ice.

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

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

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This is the original design for the endurance.

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She really was a beautiful, beautiful vessel.

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

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

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Her bow is over four feet thick.

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

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And to stop her being ripped apart by ice,

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her hull is cloaked in a wood called Greenheart.

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

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It is extraordinarily hard.

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It's so hard you cannot even drive a nail into it.

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But this is what Shackleton needed, because it is resistant to the kind of wear and tear and abrasion

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

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Shackleton named his ship Endurance after his family motto,

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By endurance we conquer.

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And the endurance will need all her strength as she sails further into the ice.

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

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these frigid waters are also the reason Shackleton's wooden ship is likely preserved at the bottom of the sea.

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In warmer seas, marine creatures eat wooden ships,

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the most destructive, a mollusk, called a shipworm.

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Shipworm can be incredibly destructive to wooden ships.

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And they are voracious, they just eat anything and everything, and no time at all,

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they can be up to two feet long, and they just eat, eat, eat, eat.

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

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And newly discovered wrecks from Northern Canada prove that icy seas can preserve wooden ships even older than the endurance.

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

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and right now the sea there is entirely frozen over.

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The crew is now beyond the reach of helicopter rescue.

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

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They've reached the west side of the Weddle Sea, as close as they can get to the wreck site in open water.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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They've never been under Antarctic ice.

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AUV team leader Channing Thomas knows the dangers.

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There is a lot of pressure.

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

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Two years of planning and tens of millions of dollars rests on the AUV sub doing its job right.

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

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

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Alright, let's go get us a successful launch.

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Alright, crank up under Alex.

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

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Leave me in the water and say good, Channing.

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Hey, you be in the water?

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Like a torpedo.

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Alright, looking good.

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All systems are go.

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Stay back here and monitor.

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Rods, is that ready to dive?

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Alright, 30 seconds till it dies.

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Come on, cowboy.

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Good job, boy!

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

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We're on our first mission.

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Now we can pull forward a little more.

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The AUV is getting down 300 meters right now.

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While the team tracks the AUV sub,

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expedition archaeologist Mensen Bound investigates how Shackleton's ship

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ended up on this side of the Weddle Sea a century ago.

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Here he is coming down the coast of the Weddle Sea

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and all the while working his way south-south.

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

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until eventually he gets all the way down here.

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And right here is where he becomes beset.

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Just 60 miles from the south coast of the Weddle Sea,

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the ice pack freezes solid around Shackleton's ship.

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The endurance is trapped.

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

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

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

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but we just had picks and shovels.

227
00:22:59,420 --> 00:23:02,420
For 40 hours, his men fight desperately,

228
00:23:02,420 --> 00:23:04,420
but they can't free her from the ice.

229
00:23:07,420 --> 00:23:09,420
The ice pack is now completely frozen.

230
00:23:09,420 --> 00:23:11,420
The ice pack is now completely frozen.

231
00:23:11,420 --> 00:23:15,420
And at that moment, Shackleton's heart sank because he knew,

232
00:23:15,420 --> 00:23:17,420
because it was so late in the season,

233
00:23:17,420 --> 00:23:19,420
that he was frozen in place for winter.

234
00:23:21,420 --> 00:23:24,420
And in the six-month-long Antarctic winter,

235
00:23:24,420 --> 00:23:27,420
just staying alive is nearly impossible.

236
00:23:29,420 --> 00:23:31,420
Everything is pushing against you.

237
00:23:31,420 --> 00:23:33,420
It's trying to kill you.

238
00:23:33,420 --> 00:23:35,420
It's trying to kill you.

239
00:23:35,420 --> 00:23:37,420
It's trying to kill you.

240
00:23:37,420 --> 00:23:39,420
It's trying to kill you.

241
00:23:39,420 --> 00:23:41,420
It's trying to kill you.

242
00:23:41,420 --> 00:23:43,420
That cold is physically painful.

243
00:23:44,420 --> 00:23:46,420
Any piece of exposed skin,

244
00:23:46,420 --> 00:23:49,420
just a little bit of a gap in your clothing,

245
00:23:49,420 --> 00:23:51,420
that's like somebody cutting your face with a knife.

246
00:23:52,420 --> 00:23:54,420
The winds,

247
00:23:54,420 --> 00:23:56,420
unrelenting,

248
00:23:56,420 --> 00:23:59,420
and the snow, driven like needles into your face.

249
00:24:02,420 --> 00:24:04,420
I was out South Pole. It was so cold.

250
00:24:04,420 --> 00:24:07,420
I removed my glove for just about a minute,

251
00:24:07,420 --> 00:24:09,420
maybe a minute and 20 seconds,

252
00:24:09,420 --> 00:24:11,420
and my thumb froze solid.

253
00:24:11,420 --> 00:24:13,420
And you think about Shackleton and his men

254
00:24:13,420 --> 00:24:16,420
out there in wool and cotton

255
00:24:16,420 --> 00:24:19,420
and things that weren't really designed for that environment.

256
00:24:22,420 --> 00:24:25,420
It just reminds me how tough those men were.

257
00:24:30,420 --> 00:24:32,420
The endurance is completely stuck,

258
00:24:32,420 --> 00:24:36,420
but she's 550 miles from where she will finally sink.

259
00:24:37,420 --> 00:24:39,420
So how did she get there?

260
00:24:42,420 --> 00:24:45,420
Turns out the endurance is still on the move

261
00:24:46,420 --> 00:24:49,420
because the ice is on the move.

262
00:24:50,420 --> 00:24:52,420
While it may look like a land mass,

263
00:24:52,420 --> 00:24:54,420
it's floating on water.

264
00:24:56,420 --> 00:24:58,420
That means whatever the water is doing,

265
00:24:58,420 --> 00:25:00,420
whatever the wind is doing,

266
00:25:00,420 --> 00:25:02,420
that affects that surface.

267
00:25:03,420 --> 00:25:06,420
Strong currents and winds in the Weddle Sea

268
00:25:06,420 --> 00:25:08,420
spin the entire ice pack

269
00:25:08,420 --> 00:25:10,420
in a giant clockwise rotation.

270
00:25:13,420 --> 00:25:16,420
For 10 months, the endurance moves with the ice.

271
00:25:22,420 --> 00:25:25,420
This is the route that the endurance was carried.

272
00:25:26,420 --> 00:25:30,420
We can follow the route very precisely.

273
00:25:32,420 --> 00:25:34,420
The crew was trapped,

274
00:25:34,420 --> 00:25:38,420
but they had reason to believe they would escape.

275
00:25:38,420 --> 00:25:40,420
Several years before, another ship,

276
00:25:40,420 --> 00:25:42,420
a ship called the Deutschland,

277
00:25:42,420 --> 00:25:44,420
had also become beset down here.

278
00:25:44,420 --> 00:25:48,420
Because the Deutschland was eventually released from the ice,

279
00:25:48,420 --> 00:25:50,420
the people on the endurance

280
00:25:50,420 --> 00:25:52,420
thought the same thing would happen to them.

281
00:25:56,420 --> 00:25:59,420
Out on deck in the early hours of the morning,

282
00:25:59,420 --> 00:26:03,420
the team is waiting for their AUP sub to return from its test run.

283
00:26:04,420 --> 00:26:06,420
But there's a problem.

284
00:26:06,420 --> 00:26:08,420
Oh, what the hell's going on?

285
00:26:10,420 --> 00:26:12,420
They've lost all contact

286
00:26:12,420 --> 00:26:15,420
with their brand new multi-million dollar sum.

287
00:26:18,420 --> 00:26:20,420
Everything started to go well.

288
00:26:20,420 --> 00:26:23,420
We were gaining confidence and...

289
00:26:24,420 --> 00:26:26,420
and then we lost it.

290
00:26:27,420 --> 00:26:31,420
When we saw that it did not surface in front of us

291
00:26:31,420 --> 00:26:34,420
or to either side of us,

292
00:26:34,420 --> 00:26:37,420
we figured it had to be in the ice.

293
00:26:39,420 --> 00:26:41,420
The team needs to move fast.

294
00:26:42,420 --> 00:26:45,420
The AUV has 54 hours of battery.

295
00:26:45,420 --> 00:26:48,420
If the battery dies, they'll never get it back.

296
00:26:49,420 --> 00:26:52,420
That's a multi-million dollar loss they can't take.

297
00:26:53,420 --> 00:26:55,420
We're gonna search that area right there.

298
00:26:56,420 --> 00:26:59,420
The AUV has two flashers on it.

299
00:26:59,420 --> 00:27:03,420
And the general idea is to get the ROV down deep,

300
00:27:03,420 --> 00:27:06,420
turn off all our lights, and hopefully see those beacons.

301
00:27:08,420 --> 00:27:10,420
Right now, I'm very worried.

302
00:27:10,420 --> 00:27:15,420
From day one, we recognized that our nemesis was going to be the ice pack.

303
00:27:15,420 --> 00:27:17,420
You know, just as it was Shackleton's,

304
00:27:17,420 --> 00:27:19,420
so was it going to be ours.

305
00:27:19,420 --> 00:27:22,420
And, hey, what? It's proved to be just that.

306
00:27:29,420 --> 00:27:31,420
After hours of tension,

307
00:27:31,420 --> 00:27:36,420
AUV operator Blake Howard finally detects a signal from the missing sub.

308
00:27:43,420 --> 00:27:47,420
The sub is within a mile of the ship, somewhere under the ice.

309
00:27:49,420 --> 00:27:54,420
The first ping when it actually did come through was a great feeling for everybody.

310
00:27:54,420 --> 00:27:58,420
It was extremely exciting for her to actually talk back to us,

311
00:27:58,420 --> 00:28:01,420
and it gave us a direction to head towards.

312
00:28:02,420 --> 00:28:07,420
The team continues pinging the sub to triangulate its location.

313
00:28:14,420 --> 00:28:17,420
Then, they pick up a response.

314
00:28:17,420 --> 00:28:22,420
It's almost definitely a hit, so it's got to be within range.

315
00:28:24,420 --> 00:28:26,420
Compared to the first two hours of gunfire.

316
00:28:26,420 --> 00:28:28,420
Yes, sir. Exactly right.

317
00:28:28,420 --> 00:28:30,420
So we're getting there.

318
00:28:37,420 --> 00:28:41,420
What are we looking at? Three meters to seven meters, Captain?

319
00:28:41,420 --> 00:28:42,420
Yeah.

320
00:28:42,420 --> 00:28:48,420
To reach the sub, the Agullus must get closer, penetrating a 20-foot thick ice wall.

321
00:28:48,420 --> 00:28:54,420
That's well beyond what their ship is built to break, but they have no choice.

322
00:29:07,420 --> 00:29:10,420
The Agullus 2 doesn't ram the ice.

323
00:29:10,420 --> 00:29:12,420
It rides up onto the ice.

324
00:29:13,420 --> 00:29:19,420
And under the weight of the 14,000-ton ship, the ice flow starts to break apart.

325
00:29:24,420 --> 00:29:30,420
The AUV is about here, about 200 meters away.

326
00:29:40,420 --> 00:29:45,420
Each strike releases colossal ice chunks bigger than the size of a house.

327
00:29:46,420 --> 00:29:53,420
By the time they're done, the ship smashed away 114 football fields worth of ice.

328
00:29:57,420 --> 00:29:59,420
We're going to launch the AUV.

329
00:29:59,420 --> 00:30:02,420
They're going to go in and locate it, and then basically they're going to drag her out.

330
00:30:11,420 --> 00:30:18,420
Across the ship, all eyes are glued to the live feed.

331
00:30:26,420 --> 00:30:30,420
Right now we are at six and a half meters.

332
00:30:34,420 --> 00:30:35,420
In under the ice.

333
00:30:35,420 --> 00:30:36,420
Hey, is that an AUV?

334
00:30:36,420 --> 00:30:37,420
That looks fun.

335
00:30:37,420 --> 00:30:39,420
We've got the AUV visual.

336
00:30:43,420 --> 00:30:46,420
Binding the AUV is a huge relief.

337
00:30:48,420 --> 00:30:50,420
But now they need to bring it out.

338
00:30:51,420 --> 00:30:56,420
You can see the end of the AUV with the prop, so it's definitely in a crack.

339
00:31:00,420 --> 00:31:03,420
Dave has to grab the AUV with the robot arm.

340
00:31:04,420 --> 00:31:08,420
Alright, so you're pretty much going to have to fly me into it.

341
00:31:14,420 --> 00:31:15,420
Come on, Bubba.

342
00:31:18,420 --> 00:31:20,420
Slow, slow, slow, slow, slow.

343
00:31:20,420 --> 00:31:21,420
Slow, slow.

344
00:31:32,420 --> 00:31:35,420
As soon as we started to move, the fish dropped away below us.

345
00:31:35,420 --> 00:31:37,420
We've got to go chase the fish down.

346
00:31:40,420 --> 00:31:43,420
I think getting back in there, going to try again.

347
00:31:51,420 --> 00:32:18,420
At this depth, the weight of water pressing down on the AUV is equivalent to two jumbo jets.

348
00:32:19,420 --> 00:32:22,420
Pilot Dave O'Hara is finding the fishing at this depth.

349
00:32:23,420 --> 00:32:26,420
Ah, is far from easy.

350
00:32:39,420 --> 00:32:42,420
The hook has to hold.

351
00:32:43,420 --> 00:32:48,420
Sorry, looks like we're starting to take tension.

352
00:32:50,420 --> 00:32:51,420
Yeah, copy.

353
00:32:51,420 --> 00:32:56,420
You could probably get the bridge to start moving real slowly forward now, I'm in.

354
00:32:58,420 --> 00:33:03,420
After four days, the AUV is finally in hand and on the way up.

355
00:33:13,420 --> 00:33:16,420
Fish along the AUV.

356
00:33:20,420 --> 00:33:21,420
You got to hold it?

357
00:33:21,420 --> 00:33:22,420
Yup.

358
00:33:22,420 --> 00:33:23,420
Alright, back down a little bit.

359
00:33:25,420 --> 00:33:27,420
That's cold, buddy.

360
00:33:29,420 --> 00:33:33,420
After a very close call, the AUV is safe.

361
00:33:37,420 --> 00:33:39,420
Alright, coming up easy.

362
00:33:43,420 --> 00:33:44,420
We're good.

363
00:33:48,420 --> 00:33:49,420
Got it, pal.

364
00:33:50,420 --> 00:33:51,420
That's it.

365
00:33:51,420 --> 00:33:53,420
I'm glad to have it on board.

366
00:33:55,420 --> 00:34:02,420
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.

367
00:34:04,420 --> 00:34:09,420
With the critical gear now on board, the hunt for the wreck is back on.

368
00:34:09,420 --> 00:34:11,420
The team can now press ahead.

369
00:34:26,420 --> 00:34:30,420
After a near disaster, the team can move forward again.

370
00:34:31,420 --> 00:34:35,420
But there's still 230 miles from where Shackleton's ship went down.

371
00:34:36,420 --> 00:34:41,420
And in that area, the sea is still entirely covered in ice.

372
00:34:44,420 --> 00:34:51,420
Shackleton and his ship drifted into this northwestern part of the Weddle Sea in October 1915.

373
00:34:54,420 --> 00:34:59,420
For ten long months, they'd been locked in the ice in a bitter struggle for survival.

374
00:35:00,420 --> 00:35:02,420
It's so damn cold.

375
00:35:03,420 --> 00:35:09,420
If you don't have an elaborate safety net of equipment, you'll die.

376
00:35:11,420 --> 00:35:14,420
Shackleton's only safety net is his ship.

377
00:35:14,420 --> 00:35:18,420
But now the mounting pressure in the ice is breaking it apart.

378
00:35:20,420 --> 00:35:21,420
They're in the ship.

379
00:35:21,420 --> 00:35:24,420
They can hear this ice moving against the ship.

380
00:35:24,420 --> 00:35:26,420
You hear the creaking of the ship.

381
00:35:26,420 --> 00:35:30,420
You hear the pressure on the joints.

382
00:35:30,420 --> 00:35:34,420
You never know if the ship's just going to break apart.

383
00:35:36,420 --> 00:35:38,420
The timbers began to crack and groan.

384
00:35:39,420 --> 00:35:43,420
It was there like heavy fireworks and blasting of guns.

385
00:35:43,420 --> 00:36:00,420
The sea, the pack ice move in and just squeeze the life out of that boat.

386
00:36:01,420 --> 00:36:08,420
It must have been so trying and so depressing.

387
00:36:09,420 --> 00:36:14,420
Mother Nature overwhelms the mighty endurance.

388
00:36:16,420 --> 00:36:21,420
Finally, Shackleton gives the order to abandon ship.

389
00:36:24,420 --> 00:36:34,420
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.

390
00:36:35,420 --> 00:36:43,420
The 28 men and 49 dogs can only watch as the endurance is overwhelmed.

391
00:36:47,420 --> 00:36:53,420
I can only imagine what it was like for him when he sat there and stood on the ice and watched it just slowly implode.

392
00:36:56,420 --> 00:37:00,420
Just a piece of his heart and soul would probably went down with that ship when it went.

393
00:37:05,420 --> 00:37:08,420
The ship disappears beneath the surface.

394
00:37:13,420 --> 00:37:16,420
Shackleton and his men are truly alone.

395
00:37:17,420 --> 00:37:24,420
I think they're much more lonely than I was on Apollo 13 because I had communication with home.

396
00:37:25,420 --> 00:37:31,420
Shackleton, he didn't have a radio, he didn't have wifi, he didn't have a cell phone.

397
00:37:32,420 --> 00:37:33,420
He was alone.

398
00:37:36,420 --> 00:37:44,420
Shackleton's dream of becoming the first man to cross Antarctica is ultimately crushed along with his ship.

399
00:37:48,420 --> 00:37:52,420
This is where his real battle for survival begins.

400
00:37:53,420 --> 00:38:05,420
Back on the Agullus II, Mensen searches the records. He believes these hold the secret to understanding how the ship sank.

401
00:38:08,420 --> 00:38:17,420
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.

402
00:38:18,420 --> 00:38:32,420
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.

403
00:38:32,420 --> 00:38:36,420
That would have kept her upright and would the some extent have slowed her down.

404
00:38:36,420 --> 00:38:44,420
As Mensen bound reviews records about the endurance, suddenly there's another crisis aboard the Agullus II.

405
00:38:47,420 --> 00:38:49,420
The ship is sinking.

406
00:38:57,420 --> 00:38:58,420
The port is gone.

407
00:38:59,420 --> 00:39:15,420
While rescuing the AUB sub, a critical part of the underwater robot has imploded under the extreme pressures 10,000 feet below the surface.

408
00:39:15,420 --> 00:39:20,420
The robot's electronic brain is now mangled metal.

409
00:39:21,420 --> 00:39:33,420
We've had a catastrophic failure. We don't have the electronic to rebuild the ROV. I don't know what to say really. I just don't.

410
00:39:34,420 --> 00:39:43,420
The aluminum pod was designed to withstand pressure nearly three miles below the surface.

411
00:39:43,420 --> 00:39:49,420
But Steve thinks the combination of extreme cold and a material flaw has caused it to be crushed.

412
00:39:49,420 --> 00:39:58,420
This is what we found. One half of the bottle has pancaked into the other half of the bottle. There were quite substantial electronics and they've been entirely crushed.

413
00:39:59,420 --> 00:40:06,420
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.

414
00:40:08,420 --> 00:40:12,420
It's a bitter blow for expedition archaeologist Mensen bound.

415
00:40:12,420 --> 00:40:20,420
The worst possible news, I mean, to lose our electronics like that, there is no replacement.

416
00:40:20,420 --> 00:40:24,420
We can't fly in spare parts. There's nothing we can do.

417
00:40:24,420 --> 00:40:30,420
This is what I was going to use to study the wreck, really eyeball to eyeball with the wreck.

418
00:40:41,420 --> 00:40:48,420
The hunt for Shackleton's endurance is stalled thanks to equipment failure. And there's a new problem.

419
00:40:49,420 --> 00:40:55,420
The bridge learns their closest route to the wreck site is now totally blocked by ice.

420
00:40:57,420 --> 00:41:05,420
Analyzing daily satellite photographs, ice pilot Freddie Luke Tellum is hunting for another way in.

421
00:41:05,420 --> 00:41:11,420
We can actually approach the search site coming right around all the ice and approaching it from the southeast.

422
00:41:11,420 --> 00:41:15,420
With a bit of luck, we can be cautiously optimistic.

423
00:41:16,420 --> 00:41:24,420
The new plan is to go the long way around, skirt the pack ice and then head toward the wreck site.

424
00:41:24,420 --> 00:41:31,420
I'm excited about it. Can't beat the smile off my face right about now, you know, finally getting there.

425
00:41:33,420 --> 00:41:44,420
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.

426
00:41:45,420 --> 00:41:49,420
Finding Shackleton's ship is the ultimate goal of this expedition.

427
00:41:52,420 --> 00:42:00,420
But 100 years ago, losing the endurance was just the start of a journey that would make Ernest Shackleton a legend.

428
00:42:06,420 --> 00:42:11,420
Stranded on the ice, Shackleton's men face impossible odds.

429
00:42:11,420 --> 00:42:15,420
But they have blind faith in the man they call the boss.

430
00:42:16,420 --> 00:42:25,420
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.

431
00:42:27,420 --> 00:42:32,420
Shackleton orders his men to march for land 200 miles across the ice.

432
00:42:32,420 --> 00:42:44,420
Shackleton has these massive sleds with full wooden boats on them loaded with supplies.

433
00:42:47,420 --> 00:42:59,420
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.

434
00:42:59,420 --> 00:43:03,420
And so as you're approaching it, it basically is a wall of ice.

435
00:43:05,420 --> 00:43:10,420
I mean, I don't like to say things that are impossible, but I don't know how they would get over that stuff.

436
00:43:12,420 --> 00:43:15,420
The men cover only nine miles of pack ice in a week.

437
00:43:17,420 --> 00:43:21,420
Shackleton realizes reaching land is impossible.

438
00:43:22,420 --> 00:43:26,420
To make matters worse, they're slowly starving to death.

439
00:43:27,420 --> 00:43:34,420
As food supplies run out, they're forced to eat the only things that brought them joy in the wilderness, their dogs.

440
00:43:36,420 --> 00:43:42,420
The companionship that the dogs provided the team was quite significant.

441
00:43:43,420 --> 00:43:55,420
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.

442
00:43:56,420 --> 00:44:00,420
If you're shooting your dogs, you're on the down and outs.

443
00:44:05,420 --> 00:44:13,420
Then, as the ice they're on drifts closer to the open ocean, it starts to break apart beneath them.

444
00:44:13,420 --> 00:44:26,420
And they have to rush onto their boats. They have to throw their things on their boats.

445
00:44:27,420 --> 00:44:30,420
They have to get into these boats with everything they need to survive.

446
00:44:31,420 --> 00:44:38,420
They have no choice but to go from relative safety to basically certain death.

447
00:44:38,420 --> 00:44:45,420
Shackleton has finally left the ice that's trapped him for 15 months.

448
00:44:46,420 --> 00:44:51,420
But now he faces a new danger, the open, weddle sea.

449
00:44:56,420 --> 00:45:04,420
Even today, this sea is nearly impossible to navigate, as the crew of the Agullus II is finding out.

450
00:45:05,420 --> 00:45:12,420
She's stuck in the ice, just like Shackleton's ship.

451
00:45:16,420 --> 00:45:18,420
We're stuck. We're in a whiteout.

452
00:45:19,420 --> 00:45:26,420
The ice is well over three meters thick, possibly even as much as five, and we're way, way below zero.

453
00:45:27,420 --> 00:45:35,420
In the early hours of the morning, the ship was brought to a standstill by impenetrable fog.

454
00:45:36,420 --> 00:45:39,420
The ice moved in around her and froze her in.

455
00:45:43,420 --> 00:45:47,420
If the temperature drops further, the ice could trap the crew for days,

456
00:45:48,420 --> 00:45:51,420
and the harsh Antarctic winter is already barreling down on them.

457
00:45:52,420 --> 00:45:54,420
But Devon's got an idea.

458
00:45:54,420 --> 00:45:57,420
Well, we could do like Shackleton did on the endurance when they got stuck in the ice

459
00:45:58,420 --> 00:46:02,420
and had the whole crew run from one side of the vessel to the other together to rock the ship free.

460
00:46:06,420 --> 00:46:11,420
Instead of using Shackleton's method, Captain Bendu tries a different solution,

461
00:46:13,420 --> 00:46:18,420
shifting a 40-ton container of fuel using his crane.

462
00:46:18,420 --> 00:46:29,420
We use the heavy weights to create a lever for the ship to heal or lift or to start.

463
00:46:49,420 --> 00:46:51,420
Sounds like we're moving again.

464
00:46:52,420 --> 00:46:56,420
You can hear the distinct difference in the sound here.

465
00:46:57,420 --> 00:47:02,420
That's definitely ice scraping alongside the vessel as we're moving forward.

466
00:47:02,420 --> 00:47:09,420
A century ago, Shackleton wasn't so lucky.

467
00:47:10,420 --> 00:47:18,420
When he and his men are forced onto lifeboats, they have to battle freezing winds and ice storms on the open ocean.

468
00:47:18,420 --> 00:47:25,420
Shackleton sets out for a tiny island 60 miles away. It's his final hope.

469
00:47:26,420 --> 00:47:32,420
On the seventh day at sea and barely alive, they miraculously spot land.

470
00:47:33,420 --> 00:47:38,420
The Shackleton's been in the ocean for a long time.

471
00:47:38,420 --> 00:47:40,420
It's his final hope.

472
00:47:42,420 --> 00:47:47,420
On the seventh day at sea and barely alive, they miraculously spot land.

473
00:47:48,420 --> 00:47:57,420
And when they saw a lift in the island, everybody cheered and we pulled as hard as we could to make our landing.

474
00:47:59,420 --> 00:48:03,420
If I was a weird sort of euphoria because they hadn't made it home,

475
00:48:03,420 --> 00:48:07,420
they had made it onto an inhospitable rock.

476
00:48:08,420 --> 00:48:13,420
The first night there, what was left of there, tents were just shredded in the wind.

477
00:48:14,420 --> 00:48:18,420
Humans were not meant to be there. The whalers didn't even come by there.

478
00:48:21,420 --> 00:48:24,420
They are on a tiny, storm-battered pinprick of a rock.

479
00:48:26,420 --> 00:48:32,420
Of course, food was very short. We had very little except a little seal and penguin whenever they came up.

480
00:48:33,420 --> 00:48:39,420
Shackleton knew the men could not survive. Conditions would only get worse. He had to get help.

481
00:48:40,420 --> 00:48:44,420
And he knew he had to go as quick as possible.

482
00:48:45,420 --> 00:48:49,420
But the only way out is across the most dangerous ocean on the planet.

483
00:48:49,420 --> 00:48:51,420
The Shackleton

484
00:49:01,420 --> 00:49:07,420
Five hundred seven days after he was first trapped by ice, Shackleton begins the perilous journey that will make him a legend.

485
00:49:09,420 --> 00:49:16,420
Taking only five men, two barrels of water and four weeks of food rations, he launches their largest light boat.

486
00:49:17,420 --> 00:49:23,420
There's a picture taken by Hurley with a little brownie camera with a little camera he had.

487
00:49:24,420 --> 00:49:27,420
That picture scares the bejesus out of me.

488
00:49:28,420 --> 00:49:36,420
This tiny speck of a boat, them all waving bravely at them as if to give them encouragement.

489
00:49:38,420 --> 00:49:43,420
Most of them must have felt they're never going to make it and we're never going to be saved.

490
00:49:47,420 --> 00:49:54,420
Shackleton's plan is to head to the island of South Georgia, 800 miles across the Southern Ocean.

491
00:49:55,420 --> 00:50:01,420
The Southern Ocean is probably one of the most treacherous bodies of water on this planet.

492
00:50:03,420 --> 00:50:09,420
It's not uncommon to have winds in this 50, 60, 70 mile an hour swells up to 100 foot.

493
00:50:10,420 --> 00:50:15,420
The water temperature is just a little above freezing. It can sink a vessel in seconds.

494
00:50:17,420 --> 00:50:26,420
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.

495
00:50:30,420 --> 00:50:39,420
The odds are stacked against them. But Shackleton knows if he doesn't make it to land, all his men will perish.

496
00:50:40,420 --> 00:50:46,420
He finally spots the island of South Georgia.

497
00:50:47,420 --> 00:50:58,420
They made it. They had made the toughest crossing in the world in a vessel never made that crossing before. There was a sense of euphoria.

498
00:50:59,420 --> 00:51:09,420
From his landing point at King Harkin Bay, the closest settlement is a whaling station 30 miles to the east.

499
00:51:11,420 --> 00:51:15,420
But blocking his path now is a towering mountain range.

500
00:51:16,420 --> 00:51:31,420
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.

501
00:51:32,420 --> 00:51:47,420
After climbing for 36 hours, Shackleton finally limps into civilization.

502
00:51:48,420 --> 00:52:03,420
When Shackleton told his story of what they'd been through, no one at the whaling station, they couldn't believe it. It was every step of this story was beyond belief.

503
00:52:06,420 --> 00:52:12,420
But of course, if it wasn't over for Shackleton then, he had to go back and save the people on Elephant Island.

504
00:52:17,420 --> 00:52:22,420
This is the point where she went down.

505
00:52:27,420 --> 00:52:37,420
The Agullus II has finally broken through to the exact coordinates of the Shackleton.

506
00:52:37,420 --> 00:52:42,420
It's a major achievement.

507
00:52:45,420 --> 00:52:50,420
Only a handful of ships have ever been here.

508
00:52:50,420 --> 00:52:57,420
The Agullus II has finally broken through to the exact coordinates of the Endurance wreck site.

509
00:52:57,420 --> 00:53:04,420
It feels great as up on the bridge to late. I only got two hours sleep, I'm shattered, but at the same time I'm really happy. But we still got to find it.

510
00:53:04,420 --> 00:53:10,420
To actually be here and to be able to find it, I'm really happy.

511
00:53:10,420 --> 00:53:15,420
I'm really happy.

512
00:53:15,420 --> 00:53:20,420
I'm really happy.

513
00:53:20,420 --> 00:53:25,420
I'm really happy. But we still got to find it.

514
00:53:25,420 --> 00:53:32,420
To actually be here and able to be part of the search is very exciting. I'm ready for it.

515
00:53:35,420 --> 00:53:40,420
We're going to launch from where we're at, all the way down to 3,000 meters to the bottom.

516
00:53:40,420 --> 00:53:45,420
Hopefully everything works well according to plan and we'll see what happens.

517
00:53:50,420 --> 00:53:58,420
Existing scans reveal that the Agullus II is floating above a vast underwater plane.

518
00:53:58,420 --> 00:54:06,420
Here the seafloor plunges down 40 times the height of Niagara Falls to a depth of 10,000 feet.

519
00:54:06,420 --> 00:54:16,420
This is the deepest zone of the Weddle Sea and the crew believes this plane is the final resting ground of Shackleton's ship.

520
00:54:21,420 --> 00:54:34,420
10,000 feet down, somewhere in these icy depths lie the remains of Shackleton's ship.

521
00:54:34,420 --> 00:54:40,420
Remarkably, the water at the seafloor is below 32 degrees.

522
00:54:40,420 --> 00:54:45,420
It doesn't freeze solid because of the vast pressures at depth.

523
00:54:45,420 --> 00:54:52,420
The depth combined with the super cold water, any bacterial activity will be slowed down.

524
00:54:52,420 --> 00:54:56,420
This is all pretty good news for the preservation of the endurance.

525
00:54:59,420 --> 00:55:05,420
All they've got to do now is launch the AUB sub to hunt it down.

526
00:55:16,420 --> 00:55:21,420
The propellers bite and the AUB dives.

527
00:55:26,420 --> 00:55:33,420
That was a successful launch for the first mission to search for the endurance.

528
00:55:33,420 --> 00:55:39,420
If all goes well on the mission plan we should be recovering in about 42, 43 hours.

529
00:55:39,420 --> 00:55:47,420
Everything's looking good at the moment and we're going to keep our fingers crossed, keep thinking positive and keep pushing forward.

530
00:55:49,420 --> 00:55:59,420
Shackleton too pushes forward. After battling across 800 miles of open sea for two weeks, he finally reaches the island of South Georgia.

531
00:56:00,420 --> 00:56:09,420
But of course, it wasn't over for Shackleton then. He had to go back and save the people on Elephant Island.

532
00:56:09,420 --> 00:56:16,420
Shackleton strives tirelessly for four months to break back through the frozen sea.

533
00:56:19,420 --> 00:56:22,420
At last, he approaches Elephant Island.

534
00:56:23,420 --> 00:56:31,420
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.

535
00:56:31,420 --> 00:56:38,420
And Shackleton is counting one, two, three, four, all the way up until he's counted everyone.

536
00:56:43,420 --> 00:56:48,420
And he looks to, wordsily, and says, they're all there, they're all alive.

537
00:56:48,420 --> 00:56:54,420
And the emotion that he had at that time had to be just overwhelming.

538
00:56:59,420 --> 00:57:09,420
To bring everybody and his expedition back home alive was probably one of the greatest adventure achievements that we have in our history books.

539
00:57:10,420 --> 00:57:19,420
On board the Agullus II, the crew hunting down Shackleton's wreck has suffered a major blow.

540
00:57:23,420 --> 00:57:30,420
Thirty hours into the dive, the AUV that's scanning the sea floor has gone missing.

541
00:57:30,420 --> 00:57:34,420
The multi-million dollar machine has likely located the wreck.

542
00:57:35,420 --> 00:57:40,420
But AUV operators Devon and Blake have lost contact with it.

543
00:57:40,420 --> 00:57:44,420
If they can't reconnect, they'll never find out what's below.

544
00:57:54,420 --> 00:57:56,420
The AUV could be anywhere.

545
00:57:58,420 --> 00:58:01,420
And temperatures are dropping fast.

546
00:58:02,420 --> 00:58:05,420
The ice flows are closing in.

547
00:58:10,420 --> 00:58:14,420
As conditions worsen, the team makes a difficult call.

548
00:58:21,420 --> 00:58:24,420
It's tough to search for an AUV in this kind of situation.

549
00:58:25,420 --> 00:58:29,420
You know, mother nature, you know, at some point puts her foot down and lets you know who's boss.

550
00:58:32,420 --> 00:58:38,420
For now, the team halts their mission and reluctantly heads home.

551
00:58:42,420 --> 00:58:47,420
We were always up against the ice. That was always the enemy for us, just as it was for Shackleton.

552
00:58:48,420 --> 00:58:51,420
And yeah, it's beating us also.

553
00:59:01,420 --> 00:59:10,420
Three years later, undeterred by the same freezing season howling winds that defeated both Shackleton and the team on their previous attempt,

554
00:59:10,420 --> 00:59:14,420
the Agullus II returns on a new expedition.

555
00:59:15,420 --> 00:59:18,420
This time, the crew realizes their dream.

556
00:59:21,420 --> 00:59:25,420
One of the most remarkable stories of survival and determination.

557
00:59:25,420 --> 00:59:29,420
Ten thousand feet below the surface of Antarctica's Waddell Sea.

558
00:59:29,420 --> 00:59:33,420
The secret the ocean has kept hidden for over 100 years.

559
00:59:39,420 --> 00:59:45,420
They find the endurance, resting on the sea floor nearly two miles down.

560
00:59:45,420 --> 00:59:54,420
As Mensen anticipated, the ship is largely intact, standing upright its wood well preserved by the cold.

561
00:59:59,420 --> 01:00:02,420
The team leaves the wreck untouched.

562
01:00:03,420 --> 01:00:12,420
Endurance remains in its final resting place, a chilling monument to the singular courage of Ernest Shackleton and his men.

563
01:00:15,420 --> 01:00:22,420
Whenever I'm out there in a tricky situation, climbing or where things might not be going my way,

564
01:00:22,420 --> 01:00:33,420
I take a bit of Shackleton and I plug it in and I'm like, yeah, Mr. Ernest Shackleton, he would persevere.

565
01:00:34,420 --> 01:00:38,420
And that is the power of Shackleton's story.

566
01:00:39,420 --> 01:00:55,420
Shackleton resonates today because of keeping his men together, keeping morale up, doing the impossible and then saving them.

567
01:00:55,420 --> 01:00:57,420
That's endurance.

568
01:01:00,420 --> 01:01:03,420
The astonishing story of the endurance.

569
01:01:04,420 --> 01:01:09,420
Its loss at sea and its recent discovery inspires the world.

570
01:01:09,420 --> 01:01:16,420
Like Shackleton himself and his men, the team on the Agullus II refused to give up.

571
01:01:16,420 --> 01:01:22,420
And now after a century, we finally know the last chapter in this mystery.

572
01:01:22,420 --> 01:01:27,420
Shackleton's lost ice ship is lost no more.

573
01:01:27,420 --> 01:01:33,420
I'm Lawrence Fishburne and thanks for watching History's Greatest Mysteries.