Just a week after bringing back images of the Centaur, 2000m down off Queensland, the Briton has stated his desire to find and film the Endurance, sunk in 1915 in the Weddell Sea during Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition.
Shackleton’s aim, to cross Antarctica from sea to sea via the South Pole, was dashed after Endurance was trapped and crushed in ice before the shore parties could be disembarked.
Mearns has described the challenge of locating and recording the Endurance as “the search to end all searches”.
Speaking to Australian press he said that, despite the potential difficulties of carrying out a search in 3000m of water in between two ice caps, he was “more confident about this project than anything else I've done”.
First, though, US$10 million will need to be raised from corporate or private backers in order to mount an expedition.
The loss of the Endurance led to one of history’s great feats of seamanship and navigation, in which Shackleton and a selected band of expedition members sailed an adapted lifeboat, James Caird, from Elephant Island to South Georgia.
The voyage secured their own safety and the rescue of the other men left behind on Elephant Island.
Currently Mearns is the toast of Australia, his discovery of the Australian hospital ship Centaur coming after his location, in early 2008, of the Australian light crusier HMAS Sydney off the country’s west coast.
Both vessels fill poignant places in Australian WW2 history, having been sunk with great loss of life.
Mearns is preparing a report on the Centaur expedition. He will speak about the Sydney project at the International Shipwreck Conference in Plymouth on 6 February.
Related links
WW2 hospital ship found
Aussie cruiser found (March 2008)
Plymouth hosts Shipwreck Conference
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