A Well Preserved Wreck

Few who hear the story of the Endurance could avoid reflecting on the aptness of the ship’s name. A year after setting out on the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition in 1914, it got stuck in a mass of drifting ice off Antarctica. There it remained for ten months, while leader Sir Ernest Shackleton and his crew of 27 men waited for a thaw. 

But the Endurance was being slowly crushed, and eventually had to be left to its watery grave. What secures its place in the history books is the sub-expedition made by Shackleton and five others in search of help, which ensured the rescue of every single man who’d been on the ship.

This harrowing journey has, of course, inspired documentaries, including this year’s Endurance from National Geographic, which debuted at the London Film Festival last month and will come available to stream on Disney+ later this fall.

 “The documentary incorporates footage and photos captured during the expedition by Australian photographer Frank Hurley, who [in 1914] brought several cameras along for the journey,” writes Smithsonian.com’s Sarah Kuta. “Filmmakers have color-treated Hurley’s black-and-white images and footage for the first time. They also used artificial intelligence to recreate crew members’ voices to ‘read’ their own diary entries.”     READ MORE...