Hunt for Endurance

Lowered by helicopter, the Sabertooths will be sent through a prepared hole cut in the ice to survey an area of four by eight nautical miles to find and film the wreck, believed to be 3,000 metres underwater, its precise location unknown.

Both Sabertooths are currently on board an icebreaker with the research teams, heading for Antarctica, as part of Endurance22, a mission to locate Shackleton’s missing ship, headed up by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust.

Even in this age of satellites and icebreakers, locating the Endurance has seemed an impossible task.

“Believe me, it’s quite daunting,” said Mensun Bound, a marine archaeologist with Endurance22.

’Vicious, lethal environment’

“The pack ice in the Weddell Sea is constantly on the move in a clockwise direction. It’s opening, it’s clenching and unclenching. It’s a really vicious, lethal environment that we’re going into.”

Lessons have been learnt during a previous failed attempt to reach the ship in 2019, not least in the area of submersibles. In the earlier expedition, a Kongsberg Hugin AUV was used but was not designed to relay information in real time. When the sub subsequently failed after reaching the seafloor all the mapping information was lost.

The Sabertooth, said to be the world’s only roaming and hovering robot that can operate in both fully autonomous and tethered modes, will transmit data in real time, allowing the survey to be immediately halted if the wreck is sighted.

 “The Sabertooth is fitted with long-range side-scan sonar which supplies images of the seabed to you on the topside, either on board the ship or in the tent of the ice camp,” explained Nico Vincent, who will oversee the operation.

“If a target appears beside the vehicle, we can, at the flick of a switch, interrupt the task plan and fly like a drone to the target to double-check it.”