Battling sea ice and freezing temperatures, the team had been searching for more than two weeks in a 150-square-mile area around where the ship went down in 1915. ...
The hunt for the wreck, which cost more than $10 million, provided by a donor who wished to remain anonymous, was conducted from a South African icebreaker that left Cape Town in early February. ...
Once the wreck was located several days ago . . ..
Shackleton was tripped up by the Weddell’s notoriously thick, long-lasting sea ice, which results from a circular current that keeps much ice within it. In early January 1915 Endurance became stuck less than 100 miles from its destination and drifted with the ice for more than 10 months as the ice slowly crushed it. ...
The Weddell Sea still remains far icier than other Antarctic waters . . ..
The icebreaker, Agulhas II, left the search area on Tuesday [yesterday, March 8] for the 11-day voyage back to Cape Town.
More.
Why do you think it's taken this long to find the wreck?
Conditions there are as inhospitable now as they have ever been, and are forbidding even to a $10 million expedition using a modern icebreaker and fancy undersea gear with sonar and high resolution cameras and a short window of opportunity of only "several days" to spend documenting the find once they'd found it before having to high tail it out of there.
From departure from Cape Town Saturday February 5 to departure from the Weddell Sea Tuesday March 8 was thirty-one days.
That's the news that's not mentioned by The New York Times, even while mentioning it.
Endurance's coal-fired steam engine could make 10 knots
