Reading time: 2 minutes – Spotted on The New York Times
He will have spent sixty-two years underwater, without anyone finding him. The wreck of the Quest, the last ship to carry explorer Ernest Shackleton, was found on June 9, 2024 using underwater imagery.
On this day, a research team, led and funded by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, is working off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, in the northeast of the country. After seventeen hours spent at sea scanning the seabed, the sonar detected the wreck at a depth of 390 meters. The blurry images that reach the team do not prevent them from understanding what is on the screen, reports expedition leader John Geiger to the New York Times: “Very quickly, we could see that it was the Quest. The ship is intact, resting on its keel with the mast lowered.”
A major discovery for the international team made up of oceanographers, historians, divers and specialists in underwater technology, including wreck hunter David Mearns. According to him, there are plans to return to sea later this year to obtain more images and video footage of the wreck. A godsend as the year 2024 marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Ernest Shackleton.
Two ships, one story
On January 5, 1922, the Quest was anchored near South Georgia. On board, explorer Ernest Shackleton is in his cabin. He plans to explore part of Antarctica, but a heart attack leads to his death and marks the end of his ambitions. In subsequent years, the ship was used for rescue and sealing operations.
During a sea expedition on May 5, 1962, the boat was damaged by the ice of the North Atlantic and sank in its waters. The crew members nevertheless managed to be rescued. The ship Endurance, which also belonged to Shackleton before his death, had suffered the same fate. Caught in the ice, it sank in 1915 before being found in 2022 in the Weddell Sea, off the coast of Antarctica, by another research team.
