Crew's Final Movements Frozen in Time on Endurance

As Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton's flagship, Endurance, was lost to ice in 1915, the expedition's photographer grabbed a flare gun and fired it as a tribute to the ship which served as the crew's home. In his diary, Frank Hurley recalled that he then set the flare gun back on the ship's deck. It still remains with the ship at the bottom of the Weddell Sea. Two years after the discovery of the shipwreck in nearly 10,000 feet of chilly water, the Falklands Heritage Maritime Trust has unveiled a 3D scan of the Endurance based on 25,000 high resolution images, revealing a ship frozen in time, with the flare gun still on its deck, along with scattered plates that might've contained the crew's last meal on board, per the BBC.

Also visible is a single boot that possibly belonged to Shackleton's second-in-command, Frank Wild. Shackleton intended to attempt the first land crossing of Antarctica but had to abandon that goal when Endurance became stuck in pack ice. The crew stayed with the ship as it drifted for months. Eventually forced to abandon ship, all 27 crew members survived a harrowing journey across hundreds of miles of ice, sea, and land. Endurance survived pretty well, too, despite the toppling of its masts. The scan shows "the complete [144-foot-long] wooden wreck from bow to stern—even recording the grooves carved into the sediment as the ship skidded to a halt on the seafloor," per the BBC. The ship's rigging, helm, and woodwork are also "remarkably preserved," per the Guardian.

"We come back over 100 years later, and there's that flare gun," says Dr. John Shears, a polar geographer who led the expedition that found the wreck. "Incredible." The 3D scan performed by underwater robots was released ahead of a new documentary on the expedition. The scan is "absolutely fabulous" and provides a great opportunity to study the remote wreck that is so challenging to reach physically, says expedition co-leader Nico Vincent of Deep Ocean Search, noting new artifacts may be highlighted. The documentary, also titled Endurance, featuring many of Hurley's photographs, will premiere at the London Film Festival on Saturday before airing on the National Geographic Channel. It will stream later on Disney+ and Hulu, per Deadline. (More Ernest Shackleton stories.)