The ship that find the death of polar explorer Ernest Shackleton has been found in singular circumstance on the seafloor around 15 nautical miles from the seashore of Canada .

A squad of external experts lead by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society ( RCGS ) located the ship , calledQuest , at a profundity of 390 meters ( 1,280 foot ) along the glide of Newfoundland and Labrador .

Shackleton was aboard the ship when he died of a heart attack in January 1922 . At the time , the ship was anchored at South Georgia , an island in the South Atlantic Ocean , during a journeying towardAntarctica . The ship continued its work for several X , but eventually sank in 1962 after getting damaged by ice-skating rink . All the gang were saved and hold up .

![A photograph of the ship Quest sinking in 1962.](https://assets.iflscience.com/assets/articleNo/74640/iImg/76816/quest sinking007.jpeg)

A photograph ofQuestsinking in 1962.Image credit: Royal Canadian Geographical Society

“ FindingQuestis one of the last chapters in the extraordinary story of Sir Ernest Shackleton , ” John Geiger , expedition loss leader for the search and chief operating officer of the RCGS , in astatement .

“ Shackleton was known for his courage and brilliance as a drawing card in crisis . The tragic sarcasm is that his was the only destruction to take place on any of the ships under his verbatim command , ” add Geiger .

The wreckage was settle using historical documents and function , which were fussy - referenced with modern engineering and live data on currents and weather conditions , as well as knowledge from local Indigenous hoi polloi .

“ I can definitively confirm that we have constitute the wreck of theQuest . She is intact . information from high resolution side read sonar imagery corresponds exactly with the known dimension and geomorphologic feature of speech of this peculiar ship . It is also logical with events at the fourth dimension of the sinking , ” explained David Mearns , a world - renowned wreck hunter and oceanographer who worked on the task .

Shackleton was a major thespian in the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration , conduct three British expeditions to the Antarctic . His most famous risky venture was made in 1914 on the shipEndurance , the crash of whichwas discovered in 2022at a depth of 3,000 meters ( almost 10,000 metrical foot ) in the Weddell Sea .

In former 1915 , theEndurancevessel became trap in the dim clique ice of the Weddell Sea , unable to break gratuitous . For several months , the gang attempted to release the ship , but the shifting chicken feed continued to tighten its handgrip . Eventually , in October 1915 , the insistence from the chalk begin to crush theEnduranceand it sink . Stranded grand of miles from the nearest human , Shackleton and his crew survived on the ice for months before embark on a precarious journeying in lifeboats to reach safety .

Against the betting odds , all 28 crewmembers of theEndurancemanaged to live the ordeal – a feat that ’s often credited to Shackleton ’s leadership .