Dan Snow's History Hit - ENDURANCE22: Searching for the Shipwreck

Episode Date: February 22, 2022

The search for the wreck of the sunken Endurance is well underway. Find out more about the submersibles, equipped with 4k cameras that can scan the seafloor hundreds of metres into the darkness and hear from the stellar crew and ice pilots who are responsible for keeping everyone on board safe in the Weddell Sea ice.But, as you've heard throughout this series, Antarctica is a harsh and volatile environment- right now the temperature is dropping and the ice is closing in around SS Agulhas II. Dan sends the podcast team a concerning message...If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store.

On the 21st November 1915, Endurance made history when she sank here in the Antarctic. Today we're making history as we send down that vehicle to see if we can find her. It just gets the tether now and it is under its own power and it is diving white water as the propellers stir it up. You know the day after endurance sank, Shackleton ripped the front cover off his Bible and it had a note from Queen Alexandra in it. She quoted Psalm 107 and she said, may you see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep.

I'm not a religious man, but that's what that drone's off to do now. Hello everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History. I'm talking to you from the deck of Agulhas 2. This is the South African icebreaker that's carrying Endurance 22, the mission to the Antarctic to find Shackleton's lost shipwreck, Endurance, in the Weddell Sea. I'm on the deck now and it might sound unusual because I'm not in the howling wind and that's because we have driven ourselves up on a large ice flow. it's probably i don't know six eight hundred meters across it's surrounded by a bit of open water we finally after

three thousand miles have reached our destination in this episode of the podcast i will be talking to people on the ship about the search i'll be talking more about the weddell sea about shackleton's endurance and various other bits of the journey if you want to look at pictures of this journey as well as listen to audio you can do so the history hit social media feeds the tiktok the instagram twitter various other places or you can subscribe to history hit tv our digital history channel netflix for history where our documentary on Shackleton that I'm filming down here will be up very soon I've already completed part one and we're well into part two. I should say while I'm standing down here on the frozen Antarctic, in the Weddell Sea, I'm looking out.

I can't believe this history hit journey started five or six years ago. Me talking into my phone in a travel lodge somewhere, I can't remember where it was in britain i never thought years later i'd be broadcasting podcasting filming on a gigantic expedition to the antarctic with hundreds thousands millions of people all over the world interacting with the stuff that team history hit down here are producing it's uh i have to pinch myself i'm incredibly lucky and i wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the listeners of this podcast, the subscribers to History Hit TV. So thank you all, as I've said before, but thank you all very much indeed.

Anyway, let's get on with the episode. We're in the Weddell Sea. Enjoy. Welcome everybody to Antarctica. We are on a Agulhas to the South African ice breaking survey and research vessel. We're going to be talking to some of the key members of the expedition, some of the crew, but we're basically here to find the shipwreck of Sir Ernest Shackleton's ship that sank somewhere here, a couple of miles away from here in November 1915. That was thought to be the end of the ship Endurance. But as of today, we are searching the seabed, underwater vehicles,

and we may bring a new chapter of Endurance's story to life, to the world. We'll come all the way down to the rear of the ship where we've got the laboratories, we've got living quarters, we've got the back deck where all the hard work happens, and we've got the helicopter deck. We've travelled 3,000 miles.

We have been through some of the stormiest oceans on planet Earth. We have seen some monster waves that came breaking over the deck. Now, ironically, we've got no waves at all. The waves are buried beneath this sheath, this layer of ice. This icebreaker is capable of smashing through about one to two metres of ice, which forms on the surface of the Weddell Sea when the temperature reaches minus 1.8 degrees centigrade. Come and have a look. There's the track of the ship.

We've broken all the ice, it's refreezing though immediately. It's about minus five on deck at the moment and it's cold enough in that water for the ice to freeze instantly. And let's go and take a look at the stern deck beneath us now where the search for Shackleton's Endurance has taken place.

where the search for Shackleton's Endurance has taken place. So this is the really working area on the stern deck here. We've got a Sabre-tooth drone. We have two of those. They are state of the art. They are the most advanced underwater search vessels and vehicles ever created by the human race. They can dive to 3000 meters. As they go along, they've got side scan sonar,

they can survey the seabed underneath them. For every meter they travel, they can survey 1400 meters of seabed below them and either side of them. They can either be controlled from up here or they can behave autonomously with a pre-programmed search pattern underneath the water. They're releasing that orange tether, umbilical cord.

It's coming off that giant reel. It's going out down over the stones. As the drone drops to the seabed, we are releasing thousands and thousands of metres of umbilical to make sure we don't lose the drone and to make sure we can get instant feedback about what it is seeing. Right, the drone has been deployed.

The drone's been deployed and I'll show you... Come over here, let's have a look over here. We need the helicopters because we may make an ice camp. We may fly off the ship if it gets too encased in ice here, if it gets too cold and the ice may fly off the ship. If it gets too encased in ice here, if it gets too cold and the ice just forms around the ship,

we don't have that nice open space at the back of the ship. We can put all the equipment onto helicopters and fly way over there, drill a hole through the ice, and then deploy our drones, those underwater vehicles, through those holes. But that means having to live on the ice and form an ice camp.

Let's go in here. Obviously all the doors in this ship will have to be super watertight because there's giant storms that pound this ship. Let's go and take a look here. So all in all on the ship, there's probably 100 people. There's the crew of the ship, South African crew.

Then there's scientists, there's helicopter pilots in the US scientists from all over the world South Africa and Germany in particular the UK come and check out our kit room quickly since we're passing this is the history hit media team there's about six of us on board we're making a documentary we are making tick tocks Instagram's live feeds all sorts of, all the social medias. And we come in here, we eat some snacks, we're running out of the good stuff. We've got the disgusting South African snacks left now,

but the biscuits went in the first day. So here we go, let's come down here. I'm going to go and talk to a historian now. Hey Waldo, how are you? How are you? Here we go, let's go and meet Menson here. He's got one of the smart cabins because he is one of the most senior people on this expedition. Here we go.

Menson Bound, the man himself. Can I offer you a cup of tea or anything? No, don't worry. We're just going to come and we're here to say hello. Tell us, what are we doing here in the middle of this icy wilderness? Why have you brought us to this point? Yeah, really. We're on the spot pretty much where it went down. And how deep is it? 3,000 metres down.

3,000 metres. It's right under our keel somewhere. There's this huge, vast, cavernous, aquatic whatever. Neither said it's there, you know, in darkness. How do we know where it is? Okay, that's a complicated story. We have Worsley's famous coordinates. They're right on the wall up there.

OK, so he was the captain of the ship. He was the captain of the ship. He was their ace navigator, and he left us with those. But the problem was that they were not able to get a sextant sighting on the day the ship sank. The first sighting was the day after, the morning of the 22nd. So, in the meantime, the ice was moving like it is... Yeah, because this ice doesn't look like it's moving, but all this ice pack is slowly about a mile an hour.

That's right. Yeah, we were doing 0.4 of a knot last night. But look at it, it's solid. It's just this one complete near the glass right now. It looks, but it is the whole thing is very slowly moving. That's right, it's opening, it's clutching, it's unclutching, it's a very very dynamic environment. But you know it is not very friendly, I mean this is not the place where humans should be at all. How are you feeling at the moment? Well, you know our first two dives were you know, not that great and why am I mincing my words? They were they were a disaster. So on a third dive right now. We're at 2,000 meters about 20 minutes ago So in fact, we should be on the sea bed right now

Sea bed now If everything works to plan this is going to be our first serious dive. Yes All right, mince. are you sleeping at the moment? No, I have to be careful. You wake up in the middle of night Your mind starts whirring around and this radio starts to crackle and you're wide awake, you know, so I'm sort of sleeping in verse Menson, I won't bother you anymore. Good luck. Dan, it's great. It's a pleasure as always. Okay. See you in a bit See you on the stern deck. Okay, here we go. Thanks, Minson. Right.

Let's come through here and look at the ship. It's in honour of, it's associated with Miriam McCabe. She was a leading freedom fighter. Very famous in the 70s, the 80s. Her songs right around the world. Civil rights activist, close to Nelson Mandela and that generation of liberation fighters. Right here we go now we're going to go we're going up to the bridge that involves climbing all the way to the top of this ship this is very exciting the bridge is where the ship is

commanded from it's controlled from there's someone on duty all the time of course let's get up there of course there are all sorts of scientific reasons for being here as well we're doing research into penguins, obviously, and lots of penguins about we've already seen. Seals, sea life. They recently found one of the biggest fisheries in the world in the Weddell Sea that scientists didn't even know was here. So we've got oceanographers on board.

We've got meteorologists. We have got people studying ice patterns, global warming, climate change. Security level one, you see, because the ship might be going through pirate infested waters we can go around that because i've got a special special shortcut right let's head into the bridge we've got the world's best ice pilots on board we've got the absolute a team here he's listening he's over here freddie do you mind if we have just two minutes chatting if that's okay freddie is the uh well you tell us, what are you, sir?

I'm a master at sea. I've been sort of captain since 2007. And, well, most of my career has been spent down in Antarctica. So I've been employed as an ice pilot for this particular voyage. And I was ice pilot also in the 2019 attempt, which proved to be quite more challenging than this year. This year, we managed to get the ship onto site quite quickly. We're dealing with quite a bit of first-year ice here, and at the moment, we've stopped in quite a big first-year ice flow,

and we've got the AUV down, hopefully finding some interesting information for us. Thank you very much indeed. Let's just quickly go down here and say hello to the rest of the crew before we leave the bridge. Hello, gentlemen. What's your role on board, sir? I'm the extra master.

We've got the extra master. How many masters have we got on board this ship on this voyage? We've got three. We've got Captain Knowledge, he's the master, and we've got Captain Freddie Lichbem, he's the ice pilot. I'm the extra master.

I'm basically's the ice pilot, I'm the extra master. Basically, understanding the ice navigation under Captain Lulich and Captain Freddie. What, just tell me what the challenges of operating for you as a master mariner in the Weddell Sea? It's the conditions. Yeah. It's nothing like navigating in open waters.

The ice conditions and changes all the time. It's nothing like navigating in open waters. The ice conditions and changes all the time. It's unpredictable. You can expect anything. Tell me we're not going to get stuck in like a Shackleton on endurance here. No, no, we're not. The ship's very capable and she's proved to be very capable. And this voyage has been good and we've had no issues. And this ship is able to break through ice one metre, three or four?

One metre. She's classed to break one metre at five knots. And we've been doing that and we've been breaking more than three metres. Three metres of ice? Of ice, yeah. Right, OK. Thank you very much. Thanks for taking the time. Sorry to bother you. No, of ice, yeah. Right, okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks for taking the time.

Sorry to bother you. No problem. Thanks, man. So that is an overview of what we're doing here. And the last thing, what I'll leave you with, the last thing I'll leave you with is the fact that there is a tradition on this ship, which is that whenever a meal is served over the tannoy, they play a beautiful little tune on this glockenspiel, I think it's called.

Now, I can't play the glockenspiel, but I will end with a little tune for you. You're listening to Dan Snow's History. I'm in Antarctica. More coming up after this. If you've always wanted to know more about some of the key events that shaped the medieval period and the modern world, then Gone Medieval from History Hit is the podcast for you. From this...

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Armour is a physical proof that that's literally true. With guests lined up at the drawbridge, it's time to let them in and begin the feast for your ears that is Gone Medieval, the podcast from History Hit. Together, my co-host Dr Kat Jarman and I, Matt Lewis. We've gone medieval and we're waiting for you to join us. So it's 9 o'clock at night. We are moving, we are ice breaking, because that's how things work here. We find a position for about 24 hours in the search box, and then, as you'll know if you've been listening to this podcast regularly, you'll know by now, the sea ice in the Weddell Sea moves. It moves roughly clockwise, it's moving north all the time.

That may be one mile an hour, but we've discovered a bit more recently. When we drift out of the... Whoa, that is a huge bit of ice. The whole ship just lurched several degrees. I mean people were losing balance. That's crazy. We must have hit a giant bit of three or four year old ice there. The whole ship pivoted on its axis but we're back. We're keeping going. The whole ship pivoted on its axis, but we're back. We're keeping going. When we drifted out of the search box, we have to take the drone out of the water, and then we have to ice break.

We have to smash our way through the search box, back over well-trodden terrain. So we are doing our daily routine, really, day after day we do this. We we get lodged in the ice it frees up around us the ice pack drifts with us they conduct searches off the stern the vessel they don't find anything and then we start again so that's where we are folks this is the daily kind of daily grind here and I always come up on deck and I love to watch the ice breaking but the more it goes on the more nervous I'm getting about how we're doing here. Time is not on our side and if this ice thickens up, flow changes, the ice starts pinching in then even this mighty icebreaker has to beat treat and we have to get out of here. Time is running out.

Hi, it's producer Mariana here. I was just putting together this podcast that you're listening to when I got this voice note from Dan. podcast that you're listening to when I got this voice note from Dan. This is what, this is what thousands of horsepower sounds like in full astern, but we are stuck in the ice. During the night the temperature has fallen and like insurance we are now hemmed in on all sides by ice. The engines are in full reverse. They've been screaming for about 20 minutes, half an hour. We're about to get the crane out, load up the crane and swing it from side to side and try and dislodge us. So this story has got some ways to go.

The plot thickens. block thickens. So I've come to the bows now away from the noise of the engine I'm looking down over the side we've got ice that's noticeably deeper. We arrived in this search box a week ago those areas of open water the ice about a meter thick the ice I'm looking at now that's frozen in massive chunks, shattered. As we came into this flow last night we broke up the flow and it's now sitting alongside us in huge chunks in grotesque twisted shapes. A lot of it's two metres possibly even thicker than that. Temperature is plummeting, it's getting a lot colder. The engines have not succeeded in getting

us out of this ice flow. They're still roaring away at the stern there. The mov have not succeeded in getting us out of this ice floe. They're still roaring away at the stern there. The movable ballast, which is water that's blasted from one side to the other to counteract the effect of big waves, has not succeeded in shaking us out, kind of rocking us out. And they've now deployed the huge crane at the bowels of the ship on the fo'c'sle and they've picked up tonnes and tonnes and tonnes of aviation fuel, a big cylinder of aviation fuel, and they are rocking, waving it around, basically, with the crane, rocking it from side to side, trying to break the frozen seal that is holding this ship firmly into this ice floe.

It is, and I don't want to be dramatic. Well, I do like being dramatic, but it is not dissimilar to Shackleton being frozen into the ice in 1915. We have still got a few tricks up our sleeve. Thanks, folks. You've reached the end of another episode. Hope you're still awake. Appreciate your loyalty.

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