Adventurer Ernest Shackleton’s last ship, Quest, has been located off the Canadian coast, representing the “last link" to a “heroic age of Antarctic exploration.”
As The Guardian reports, the wreckage of the Quest has been off the coast of Labrador.
The schooner-rigged steamship sank on a 1962 seal hunting voyage, some 40 years after Shackleton died on the Quest while it was anchored in Grytviken, South Georgia.
The Royal Canadian Geographical Society expedition to locate it was led by John Geiger, who described it as the “last link” to an “heroic age of Antarctic exploration”.
He was speaking on board an oceanographic research ship, Leeway Odyssey, which made the discovery in 400 metres of water some 15 nautical miles from the Labrador coastline.
The Quest was used for various purposes after Shackleton’s death, including working as a minesweeper in the Caribbean during the second world war. It was commissioned to hunt seals in the Labrador Sea when it struck ice and sank in May, 1962 – all its crew were rescued.
As Afloat has reported, the wreck of the Endurance was found in 2022 in the Weddell Sea during an expedition involving marine archaeologist Mensun Bound.
Read The Guardian report here
