Ever since Captain James Cook made the first recorded crossing of the Antarctic Circle, brave explorers, sailors and scientists have sailed to Antarctica, in search of its wildlife and scientific secrets. Today’s Antarctic expedition cruise industry follows in its wake, with growing numbers of tourists making the voyage to explore the Antarctic Peninsula, albeit in ships far safer and more comfortable!
The thrilling 2002 rediscovery of the Endurance, Sir Ernest Shackleton’s fabled lost vessel, has only heightened the sense of Antarctica being a destination rich in maritime history waiting to be discovered. But Endurance is far from the only story that lies beneath the waves. We’ve checked our history books and consulted maritime charts to bring this survey of the most famous shipwrecks in and around Antarctica – some of which can be seen by visitors today, and others that still carry the promise of stories waiting to be uncovered.
The Endurance
There’s no doubt that Shackleton’s Endurance is the most famous of the Antarctic shipwrecks, and if it wasn’t for the Titanic, we’d suggest it might be the most famous wreck in the world.
The Endurance set sail in the week the First World War broke out, carrying a crew of 28 men on the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition with the aim of completing the first land crossing of Antarctica. They didn’t get very far. In early 1915, it became trapped by the thick pack ice of the Weddell Sea. Endurance drifted helplessly for months before the ship was crushed by the inexorable pressure of the living ice. Thus began one of history’s greatest survival stories – camping on ice floes, a desperate run in three open boats to Elephant Island, and an epic voyage across 800 miles of the worst winter seas in the world to South Georgia to raise help. Shackleton saved all his men, though he would never step foot on Antarctica again.
In March 2022, the wreck of the Endurance was discovered under the thick ice of the Weddell, lying intact at a depth of 3,008 metres (9,869 feet). The story of both expeditions was dramatically retold in the recent National Geographic documentary Endurance (here’s our interview with its director).
Governoren
Built in 1907, the Governoren was a whaling factory ship that plied the waters of the Antarctic Peninsula at a time when whales were valued more for the oil their blubber contained than their beauty and the role they play in a healthy ecosystem.
In 1915, just as Endurance froze in the Weddell Sea, a party was thrown by the crew to celebrate a successful whale-catching season, during which an oil lamp was knocked over. Within minutes, the ship’s highly flammable cargo was ablaze and the Governoren had to be abandoned.
More than a century later, the rust-red bow of the Governoren can still be seen above the water of Foyn Harbour, where it met its fate. Of all the Antarctica shipwrecks, this is the only one that can be easily visited by expedition cruise ship passengers. The wreck is unsafe to land on, but taking a zodiac cruise around the Governoren is an eerily beautiful experience that connects visitors with one of the darker periods in Antarctica’s history.
The Antarctic
Few ships have ever been named for their mission – or could have found a better location for their final resting place than the Antarctic, which was part of Otto Nordenskjöld’s 1901-04 Swedish Antarctic Expedition.
The expedition strangely anticipated the Endurance story, though it is far less known. After dropping off its party at Snow Hill island in the Weddell Sea (a place today better known for its emperor penguin colony), the Antarctic became beset in the ice and sank, adding another Antarctica shipwreck to the list. The ship’s crew survived on nearby Paulet Island, where they sheltered overwinter in crude rocky huts and sustained themselves on a diet of penguins and seals. In 1903 they were rescued by the Uruguay from Argentina, which is anchored in Buenos Aires to this day and has been turned into a mini-polar museum.
Despite the ill fate of the Antarctic, the story of the crew’s survival is just as improbable as anything undergone by Shackleton, and deserves to be far better known.
The San Telmo
Of all the Antarctic shipwrecks, the San Telmo is one of the most intriguing. It was a 74-gun Spanish ship of the line built in 1787, of the sort more readily associated with things like the Battle of Waterloo than polar exploration.
In September 1819 the San Telmo was traversing the Drake Passage en route to Peru under the command of Captain Joaquín de Toledo when it was blown wildly off course in a storm. In a major naval disaster, all 644 men on board were lost. A year later, spars, booms and other wreckage were found by a sealing ship on Livingstone Island in the South Shetland Islands. The dates are what makes the shipwreck particularly intriguing: seven months earlier, William Smith had been the first recorded person to see the Antarctic Peninsula. Had any survivors of the San Telmo also been washed to Livingstone Island, they would have been the first humans to set foot in Antarctica, even if none of them lived to tell the tale.
The only wrecks left for visitors to see in the South Shetlands today are the seven wooden waterboats, used to supply whale factory ships, on Whaler’s Beach on Deception Island.
South Georgia shipwrecks
Not all Antarctic shipwrecks waiting to be seen by expedition cruise ship passengers are on the Peninsula. South Georgia’s coastline has always presented a challenge to navigators, due to its sheer cliffs and unpredictable winds. A 2020 Maritime Archaeology Sea Trust survey recorded dozens of wrecks in its waters, dating from when the island was a destination for sealers and whalers. While most lie on hidden reefs, several can be safely visited today including at Grytviken, the most important port of call for today’s visitors.
The wrecks of three whale catching ships lie on Grytviken’s shoreline, in front of the South Georgia Museum. They are Petrel, Días and Alabatros, all of which were left abandoned when the whaling station closed in 1966. Close to the Whaler’s Cemetery, where visitors pay tribute at Shackleton’s Grave, is the part-submerged wooden wreck of Louise, built in 1869 but accidentally burned in 1987 during a British Army training exercise.
Other whaling stations have similar wrecks, with the most impressive being the 1883 coal hull Brutus at Prince Olav Harbour, and the 1912 catcher Karrakata, which still sits on the slipway as Husvik, waiting for a call to action that will never come.
The Dundonald
On the opposite side of the Southern Ocean, the New Zealand Subantarctic Auckland Islands became the site of a notorious Antarctic shipwreck in March 1907, when the barque Dundonald was wrecked on its shores.
Dundonald had no connection to either polar exploration or whaling – it was carrying wheat from Sydney to England when it was caught in a terrible storm and was ultimately dashed against the rocks of Disappointment Island, lying just off the main Auckland Island. Just 16 of the 28 crew survived to make it to shore. Here, they had to show extreme resilience in the face of a Subantarctic winter, building shelters from earth sod, thatched tussock grass and driftwood, and eating seabirds and sea lions. After eight months, the party was rescued by the Hinemoa, which was ferrying scientists to the Auckland Islands.
MV Explorer
The last of our shipwrecks in Antarctica is one of the most poignant: the MV Explorer. Better known as ‘the Little Red Ship’, it was launched in 1991 as the first purpose-built polar expedition cruise ship.
Explorer was a true pioneer for the Antarctic cruise, even if it was relatively crude by the standards of today’s polar fleet. Its cabins were equipped only with portholes and its lack of stabilisers made the rough seas a particularly wild ride. Crucially, it had a poor strength rating for sailing in ice. In 2007 when sailing the Bransfield Strait between The South Shetland Islands, it struck an iceberg. All 154 passengers and crew members were quickly and safely evacuated, and picked up by a nearby ship.
Safety in today’s polar fleet
Nearly 20 years on, advances in maritime technology and safety mean that the modern polar fleet is almost as far removed from the Explorer as the Explorer was from the Endurance. Today’s expedition cruise ships have never been better prepared for the sea conditions encountered around Antarctica.
All ships used on expedition cruises have ice-strengthened hulls, built to withstand extreme polar conditions. This is known as either the Polar Class or the Ice Class of the ship, depending on the ship’s registration. Every ship currently taking passengers to Antarctica has an ice rating that far exceeds that of Explorer, with many rated at the same level as dedicated polar research ships like the RRS Sir David Attenborough (of Boaty McBoatface fame). One of our favourite luxury ships, Le Commandant Charcot, is so strong that it’s actually rated higher than the icebreakers operated by the US and Canadian governments.
In addition to this, all ships have technologically advanced communication systems and satellite navigation to give real-time ice and weather monitoring. This is something that passengers quickly become familiar with during the daily onboard briefings, when weather reports become of particular interest. Many ships also offer an open bridge policy or bridge tours, so that you can see the navigation systems up close and chat to officers like the specially trained ice pilot.
For stability, almost all of today’s polar cruise ships have underwater stabilisation systems, while the novel X-Bow design of many of the newest vessels offers a smoother ride on the open ocean. On the Peninsula itself, many ships also have dynamic positioning systems for when the ship is at rest in an Antarctic bay but subject to local wind conditions. Shackleton could only have dreamed of such technologies when he set sail on the Endurance.
A historical perspective
Shipwrecks in Antarctica are not just a symbol of exploration, but they remind us of the ambition and resilience (and occasional darkness) in the long history that we have forged in the White Continent over the past two centuries.
Whether you’re visiting them on an expedition cruise, listening to their stories in a talk on board your ship from a historian guide, or just reading about them in a warm comfy chair, we hope these stories of Antarctic shipwrecks will fuel your own adventure story.
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