A sonar image of the Quest. It went down on 5 May 1962

The wreck of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s “last ship” Quest has been discovered on the seafloor off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.

When I first read the news, I did a double-take. Just over two years ago, the wreck of Shackleton’s “lost ship,” Endurance, was discovered, after being trapped in pack ice and sinking in the Weddell Sea, beneath the Larsen C ice shelf, off Antarctica on November  21,1915. 

So the newly discovered wreck is Shackleton’s “last ship” and not his “lost ship.” 

Shackleton is remembered for leading an epic 720-nautical-mile open-boat journey to a South Georgia whaling station to arrange for the rescue of his crew after the Endurance was crushed by ice during the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Shackleton became famous for rescuing his crew without a single loss of life.

Shackleton returned to the Antarctic on the ship Quest with the Shackleton–Rowett Expedition in 1921, but died of a heart attack while the ship was moored in South Georgia.

Quest continued in service until it sank in 1962. The earlier link with the explorer gives it great historical significance.

“His final voyage kind of ended that Heroic Age of Exploration, of polar exploration, certainly in the south,” said renowned shipwreck hunter David Mearns, who directed the successful search operation.

“Afterwards, it was what you would call the scientific age. In the pantheon of polar ships, Quest is definitely an icon,” he told BBC News.

Ernest Shackleton’s last ship found

Thanks to Ted Spilman for contributing to this post.