Ernest Shackleton waving goodbye as he embarks on the Shackleton-Rault Expedition to the Antarctic in September, 1921.Topical Press Agency/Getty Images
The wrecks of ships sailed by two famed explorers, Sir Ernest Shackleton and Captain Robert Falcon Scott, are set to be filmed using the submersible that captured the first images of the sunken Titanic.
The expedition, led by Royal Canadian Geographical Society, will travel on Thursday to the Labrador Sea and then to waters off Greenland to scan and film the wrecks, creating 3-D digital replicas of the ships Shackleton and Scott used on their final voyages.
John Geiger, chief executive officer of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, is among those who will descend to the ocean floor in the submersible Alvin, becoming one of the first people to set eyes on the sunken ships.
It has taken two years of planning, in collaboration with the Massachusetts-based Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and an international team, to prepare for the voyage to film the wrecks. The team will embark on July 2 on the WHOI’s research vessel Atlantis; the expedition is expected to take several weeks.
In an interview, Mr. Geiger said the two ships are the last connections to two of the most acclaimed figures in the heroic age of polar exploration.
“It’ll be a real adventure, and the largest, most expensive, most complicated expedition the geographical society has ever undertaken.”
Shackleton, a renowned Anglo-Irish polar explorer, died suddenly during his final Antarctic voyage in 1922 while aboard Quest, a ship that was later used for sealing operations before sinking off the coast of Labrador in 1962. The wreck was discovered in an expedition led by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society in 2024.
Royal Canadian Geographical Society Search Director David Mearns shows a side-scan sonar image of the wreck of the Quest, Shackleton's last ship during a press conference at the Marine Institute, St. John's NL on June 12, 2024.Paul Daly/The Globe and Mail
Mr. Geiger said he was not sure what the team would find on Quest, which was stripped of many of its original features, including Shackleton’s cabin, for its use as a sealing vessel. But he hoped to find the original nameplate, its wheel, and possibly seal pelts that were left when the sinking ship was abruptly abandoned by its crew.
“Nobody has ever looked at Quest with their own eyes. I think it’ll be a very, very emotional moment to actually to look at that ship and experience it directly, not looking at a screen, but looking through a portal,” Mr. Geiger said.
Originally the society had intended only to map Quest, but then realized the wreck of Captain Scott’s last ship was located only a two days sail away.
Scott’s final ship, Terra Nova, was a wooden sail and steam powered vessel that took him on his ill-fated race to the South Pole. Scott and his British team reached the pole in January, 1912, only to discover that Norwegian Roald Amundsen had beaten them there by just over a month. On the return trek in Antarctica, Captain Scott and his four-man team perished in the perilous conditions.
“We’re dealing with the early age of Antarctic exploration from 1900 to about 1922,” Mr. Geiger remarked. “But this age that we’re living now is really a golden age of underwater exploration, and certainly with respect to shipwrecks.”
Seasoned shipwreck explorer David Mearns will also set sail from Woods Hole, Mass., this week, serving as the voyage’s co-chief scientist. He said the expedition aims to create “a three-dimensional image in the highest possible resolution, down to centimetres” of the sunken vessels.
“It’s an exact true scale replica of the shipwreck that you can manipulate, you can move around, you can rotate it, you can zoom in,” he said. “Sometimes you can even look inside the interior of the ship through open portholes or open passageways or doors, and study it like you had drained the ocean.”
In 1986, the WHOI’s three-person submersible Alvin took the spectacular first images of the wreck of the Titanic, which on its maiden voyage in 1912 sank after striking an iceberg in the North Atlantic.
With the help of the submersible Alvin – the same one used in the Titanic – the team will be some of the first people to set eyes on the sunken ship.Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution/Supplied
A remote-controlled underwater vehicle will also be sent down to the wrecks to secure more footage.
Mr. Mearns said Quest is at twice the depth of Terra Nova, which is sitting at 170 metres on the ocean floor.
“We will come to portions of the ship where we know Shackleton stood. We will come to places on Terra Nova, where we know that Scott stood, Scott slept,” Mr. Mearns said.
In the decades after Scott’s ill-fated Antarctic mission, Terra Nova also worked as a sealer. It was based in Atlantic Canada, and during the Second World War was chartered to carry supplies to Greenland. The ship experienced damage in 1943 while at sea and was deliberately sunk after the crew were rescued. Terra Nova’s wreck was discovered by the Schmidt Ocean Institute in 2012.
Footage filmed last year of Terra Nova by an expedition of marine archaeologists showed the wooden ship’s wheel, winch and mast, and that it was covered in sea life.
Mr. Geiger said his survey will use high-definition video cameras and photogrammetric technology from Voyis Imaging, a company based in Waterloo, Ont., to capture detailed portraits of both wrecks.
Royal Canadian Geographical Society Search Director, David Mearns, Expedition Leader John Geiger and assistant Antoine Normandie in front of the research vessel, Leeway Odyssey in the port of St. John's NL on June 12, 2024.Paul Daly/The Globe and Mail
“You’ll see most astonishing kind of detail, very small objects, even on the deck,” he said. “It’s incredibly exciting.”
Mr. Mearns and Mr. Geiger were both part of the mission that discovered Shackleton’s final ship in 2024 and picked up an opaque image of the sunken vessel using sonar.
Quest, a Norwegian sealing vessel with sails and auxiliary engine power, was purchased by Shackleton for a planned expedition to the Beaufort Sea in the Canadian Arctic that was cancelled when the Canadian government unexpectedly pulled its funding.
Explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton wanted to move to Canada and become Canadian
The Irish explorer instead embarked on a mapping voyage to the Antarctic. While en route, he died in his cabin of a heart attack at the age of 47. At the time of his death, in 1922, the ship was anchored off the South Atlantic island of South Georgia, where his grave still lies.
In his most famous Antarctic expedition, Shackleton’s ship, Endurance, became trapped in pack ice and then sank in the Weddell Sea in 1915. He survived for months with his entire crew of 28 by eating penguins, seals and seaweed.