FOR 1915 SHIP IS ABANDONED
their safety was confirmed – followed by pictures of the survivors.
Daily Mirror headlines read “Endurance Nipped In The Ice” and “One Of The Most Heroic Rescues In History.”
Last week the Endurance was grabbing headlines again as the so-called rediscovery mission entered a crucial phase.
Shackleton’s skipper, Frank Worsely, was a skilled navigator and charted the precise co-ordinates of the Endurance sinking. The search team – led by Prof Julian Dowdeswell – cracked through part of the 17,000 sq mile Larson C ice shelf in the Weddell Sea.
Back home, Tim Fright, who works in communications for Nokia and is a founding director of financial tech company Plenitude, was positively buoyant with anticipation. But Antarctica was to have its say yet again and the search was axed after one of the subs was entombed by ice. Tim is bitterly disappointed but hopes the secrets that lie below can be revealed “in my lifetime”.
He said: “It’s a shame. But they made the right choice for the right reasons, considering the weather conditions.
“Their decision goes to show the tough conditions in Antarctica and it’s better to be safe than sorry. It doesn’t matter if the ship is wooden, like the Endurance, or metal, like their research boat, the ice always wins.”
And the father of two – who named his three-year-old Sandy Ernest, after Shackleton – remains in awe of his Uncle Frank.
He added: “The Endurance expedition was pretty special – there aren’t many derring-do tales like it. Back then the mission was the equivalent of going to the moon. No one could help you. And they survived – it’s a pretty insane story.”
The explorers enjoyed a final voyage in 1921 before Shackleton died of a heart attack, aged just 47, in South Georgia, where he was buried. Wild captained the ship home to England before moving to South Africa, where he took up farming.
He died, at 66, in 1939. In 2011 his ashes were removed from Johannesburg and he was interred next to Shackleton. Fittingly, their graves point south to Antarctica – and the wreck of Endurance.
TIM FRIGHT DESCENDANT OF SHACKLETON’S PAL FRANK WILD