"Once-in-a-generation" expedition launched to survey 2 legendary shipwrecks

Canadian researchers will begin a "once-in-a-generation" expedition to survey two legendary shipwrecks, which belonged to an iconic pair of polar explorers, the Royal Canadian Geographical Society said.

The organization is due to send human-occupied and remotely operated vehicles to the depths of the North Atlantic this month, in hopes of observing the wrecks in detail for the first time and creating "digital twins" of each with high-definition video cameras and subsea imaging technology. 

The first of the sunken ships is called the Quest, which is known as the vessel upon which the storied explorer Ernest Shackleton died in 1922. A pioneer of Antarctic travel who completed four trips to the frozen continent over his lifetime, Shackleton and his crew famously had to abandon their ship, Endurance, when it became trapped by sea ice during a 1915 voyage.

The second wreck to be investigated is the remnants of a ship called the Terra Nova, on which Robert Falcon Scott, another polar explorer, sailed to Antarctica during a 1912 trip that infamously ended in tragedy, according to the Antarctic Heritage Trust. Although Shackleton and Scott were originally colleagues, the two eventually became rivals who competed with each other to reach the South Pole during the "Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration" in the the early 1900s.

The Terra Nova was later used as a sealing and cargo vessel, and it eventually sunk off the coast of Greenland in September 1943, according to the Deep Ocean Education Project. The wreck was discovered in 2012 by the research organization Schmidt Ocean Institute.

The Quest was used for Arctic rescues and as a Royal Canadian Navy ship, among other things, after Shackleton's death. While being used as a sealing vessel, the Quest was damaged by ice off the coast of Newfoundland and sank more than 1,200 feet to the seabed, although the crew survived. It was discovered by the RCGS in the Labrador Sea in 2024.

"The bravery and leadership demonstrated by these two polar heroes have inspired generations of explorers over the years, and our hope is that by documenting their last ships with the latest technology we too can inspire the next generation of explorers worldwide," David Mearns, the co-chief scientist on the expedition and one of the world's leading shipwreck experts, said in a statement.

The expedition involves researchers, scientists and historians from a number of countries, including Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Norway and Denmark, the RCGS said.