MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Premier of the discovery of the “Endurance” at the London Film Festival

The 2022 expedition that made the discovery at the bottom of the Antarctic continent at a depth of almost 3,000 meters was supported by the Falkland Islands Heritage Fund

This Saturday, October 12, a documentary film about the discovery of the ship “Endurance” by the great Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton will be presented at the London Film Festival.

The 2022 expedition that made the discovery at the bottom of the Antarctic continent at a depth of almost 3,000 meters was supported by the Falkland Islands Heritage Fund and was made up of a team of experts including Mensun Bound, a renowned marine archaeologist born and raised in the Falklands, and who for decades had an obsession to achieve such an event.

Using remote-controlled submersibles (a sort of underwater drones), the wreck of the “Endurance” was located at the bottom of the Weddell Sea, putting an end to a mystery of more than a century.

The “Endurance” was last seen in 1915 when explorer Shackleton and his crew of 27 men watched helplessly and bewildered as the ship, trapped in the Antarctic ice, was devoured by the frozen sea. Shackleton and his expedition had the goal of reaching the South Pole from the East Antarctic continent, a largely unexplored area.

They waited several months for the austral spring but by then the trapped ship was badly damaged by the ice and in November 1915 it disappeared forever until 2022. Shackelton then set out with five other crew members on an epic voyage that will go down in the best annals of Antarctic exploration as an example of conviction, grit and leadership to rescue the remaining crew members. After 800 miles in a precarious vessel they were able to reach the island of South Georgia from where the tasks for the final rescue of the entire crew began in 1917.

The 35-day operation in 2022 that made it possible to locate and film the “Endurance” at that depth is part of the film alternating with original filmed sections of the 1914 expedition.

Secretary of the Falklands Heritage Trust, FMHT, Donald Lamont said the film, “is very important because everyone will be able to see what happened during the search for one of the most famous and epic shipwrecks in history. Sir Ernest Shackleton's connection with the Falklands was forever linked when he gave his first public account of what happened to his men and his ship...in the Community Hall in the Islands' capital, Stanley on May 31, 1916. 118 years after that monumental exposition, we can and should remember the phenomenal achievement achieved by his leadership.”

The tape will also be available in every school around the world through a partnership with the Reach the World organization, Lamont added. “The lessons to be learned from Sir Ernest's courage and endeavor in 1914 remain unscathed for our own day.” (Source Penguin News)