A Canadian-led expedition has set out to document two of the most storied shipwrecks of the heroic age of polar exploration, the last ships of Ernest Shackleton and Robert Falcon Scott, using the same submersible that first carried people down to the Titanic. The mission promises the first close-up views of vessels that have rested on the ocean floor for generations.
The expedition is being led by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, which has granted exclusive access to CBC News. A reporter is traveling aboard the research vessel Atlantis, docked at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, from where the international team is departing to reach the wreck sites.
The centerpiece of the mission is Quest, the last ship of the great Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton. Shackleton died on board the vessel while exploring Antarctica in the 1920s. The ship later became a commercial sealing vessel, which is how it came to sink off the coast of Labrador.
Two years ago, the Royal Canadian Geographical Society located the wreck of Quest, but only with sonar. As those involved explained, sonar cannot really convey the vessel or its condition, leaving unfinished business, and this new expedition is a chance to go back and see the ship close up.
To do that, team members will descend to the seabed in Alvin, the human-occupied submersible best known as the first to visit the wreck of the Titanic. Later this week, Alvin is set to make the same kind of dive to Quest, taking researchers down to the wreck in person.
The mission will not stop at a single ship. The expedition also plans to visit the wreck of Terra Nova, which sank off Greenland. Terra Nova was the last ship of Robert Falcon Scott, the British explorer who died after reaching the South Pole, tying the voyage to another chapter of polar history.
All of the wrecks are to be documented using made-in-Canada technology, with the goal of mapping them in such fine detail that the team can produce what it calls a digital twin, a precise three-dimensional record. Organizers describe it as the biggest expedition the Royal Canadian Geographical Society has ever mounted.
For a team working over sites that are very deep, dark and cold, and effectively impossible for people to visit, the aim is to come back with visual evidence and three-dimensional maps that the public can finally see. In doing so, the expedition hopes to complete the story of the heroic age of exploration for a new audience.