Ernest Shackleton’s Last Ship, Quest, Has Been Found

The vessel was located in 1,280 feet of water off the coast of Canada, where it sank in 1962

By Lidia Goldberg

June 13, 2024

The wreck of Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton’s last ship has been discovered off the coast of Labrador, Canada. Shackleton died aboard Quest, in 1922. The schooner-rigged steamship sank in 1962 while it was being used by a Norwegian crew to hunt for seals.

The Quest wreck was discovered 7,500 miles from where she was anchored in Grytviken, South Georgia, on January 5, 1922, when Shackleton died aboard from a heart attack, at the age of 47.

Seven years earlier, Shackleton was hailed as a heroic leader. When his 1914-1917 expedition to make the first land crossing of the Antarctic continent went awry, he still managed to save his entire crew. In 1915, his ship, Endurance, became trapped in ice in the Weddell Sea and Shackleton and his crew were forced to camp on the ice floes. After Endurance was crushed by the ice, they used their lifeboats to get to Elephant Island. With a small crew, he then managed to complete an improbable 720-nautical-mile trip across the Southern Ocean in a 20-foot lifeboat to get to Grytviken on South Georgia. After reaching the whaling station, he eventually returned to Elephant Island to rescue the remaining crew, all of whom survived.

Eight of those crew returned for his second voyage aboard the Quest. After Shackleton passed away, Frank Wild took command of the Quest, but the ship and its crew returned to the United Kingdom after struggling again in the icy conditions of the Weddell Sea.

The Quest subsequently served as a rescue vessel and minesweeper during World War II. In May 1962, Quest was being used for seal hunting in the Labrador Sea when she struck ice and sank.

A team from the Royal Canadian Geographical Society found Quest just 5 days into their search and detected the wreck with their sonar equipment in 1,280 feet of water.

“The masts are knocked down and that’s what we would expect, but the whole basically is intact,” said David Mearns, search director of the project. The wreck has been preserved in the ice-cold waters that are free of wood-eating organisms. The team plans to photograph the wreck later this year.