(RADIO STATIC, BEEPING)
(WIND HOWLS)
(COUGHS)
Right, there we are. Hello.
Foremost apologies about the beard and the face.
It's been a ghastly few months.
You can probably hear the weather outside.
I mean... (WIND WHISTLES)
Awful. Awful.
My name is Ernest Shackleton.
I was born in 1874 in Ireland,
but grew up in London,
and always had legs for the sea and a heart for adventure.
In 1901, I joined the Royal Navy
and was away on my first trip to Antarctica,
an unexplored continent of mystery and intrigue.
I sailed aboard the Discovery
with the famous explorer Robert Falcon Scott -
Scott of the Antarctic.
But a few years in, I fell ill and was sent home.
Six years on, I was captain,
leading a crew back to Antarctica with a ship called the Nimrod.
Oh, it was a ghastly ship, that one, but it carried good people.
There's Douglas Mawson. He was a good lad. Good lad.
We tried to reach the South Pole, but, well, we didn't quite make it.
That brings me to now.
In 1914, I set sail on the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition.
Our goal was simple -
make the first land crossing of the Antarctic continent.
But it wasn't simple, to say the least!
Venturing deep into the Weddell Sea, we came across ice, and lots of it.
The Endurance was designed to break through the ice,
but this was...
Too much, Shackleton. We're stuck in the ice.
After 10 months of drifting,
we abandoned the ship and camped out on the ice
as we watched the Endurance sink.
Luckily, our captain, Frank Worsley, well, he had some sense.
I'll record the coordinates, sir,
so, hopefully, someone can come back and find the wreck.
Smart lad. Smart lad.
But now we had to escape Antarctica alive.
We sailed to Elephant Island using the Endurance's lifeboats,
in what I said was...
The worst portion of the worst sea in the world.
(SHIVERS)
The rest of the crew camped out here,
while Worsley, myself, and four others
rowed for 16 days and trekked for 36 hours,
arriving at Stromness whaling station,
where I could send help for my men.
Everyone survived. It's... Well, it's remarkable, really.
Well, everyone except the Endurance.
That ship is 3,000 metres under the ice and the Weddell Sea.
But with Frank Worsley's coordinates,
I hope, one day, someone will uncover it.
I'm sure they will. Shackleton out.
Fast-forward 105 years, five months and 23 days,
and a new batch of adventurers are on their own epic quest
to find the Endurance.
The expedition, called Endurance22,
set sail this month from South America
across the treacherous Southern Ocean.
It'll use Frank Worsley's coordinates
to send these robots called Sabertooths,
deep down under the ice
to see if they can find the wreck and snap some photos of it.
We're not going to touch the ship in any way.
The ship stays right where it is. It's a protected monument.
We're not going to bring anything up from the surface.
It's going to stay where it is.
Schoolkids across the globe
have been following the expedition online
and talking to some of the crew, as we all wait to see
if one of the most famous shipwrecks in history will finally be found.