History Hit and media network Little Dot Studios are the exclusive media partners of a new expedition to find, film and document one of the last great lost shipwrecks of history: Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance. The expedition, which marks the centenary of the death of the legendary explorer, will be the most ambitious broadcasting project ever undertaken from the ice of the Weddell Sea. It will set off from Cape Town in February to Antarctica, where the wreck of the Endurance has remained for over a century, lying at a depth of approximately 3500m in ice-cold seas. The expedition has been organised by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust.   Onboard the South African icebreaker Agulhas II will be a crew of scientists and archaeologists alongside a team of highly experienced extreme environment filmmakers, led by History Hit Co-Founder and Creative Director Dan Snow, who will document events in real time. South African icebreaking polar supply and research ship S. A. Agulhas II – which will be used during the Endurance 22 Expedition – anchored in King Edward Cove, South Georgia.Image Credit: George Gittins / Alamy Stock Photo Dan Snow said, “From the day I started History Hit, I knew this day would come. The hunt for Shackleton’s wreck will be the biggest story in the world of history in 2022. As the partner broadcaster we will be able to reach tens of millions of history fans all over the world, in real time. We are able to deploy some of the world’s biggest history podcasts, YouTube channels, Facebook pages and TikTok accounts to reach a massive number of history lovers. We are going to tell the story of Shackleton, and this expedition to find his lost ship, like never before. Live streaming and podcasting from ice camps, recording a vast amount of content that will live online and be accessible for generations to come. It’s a dream come true.”  Dan Snow announced the expedition this week whilst standing on the deck of Shackleton’s first Antarctic ship — the RRS Discovery, now based in Dundee. Ernest Shackleton’s first Antarctic ship, the RSS Discovery, in Dundee, Scotland.Image Credit: Dan Snow History Hit and Little Dot Studios will produce a range of content covering the setting up of the expedition, the voyage and search itself, as well as the history, science, and other themes that connect to the wider mission. The content will be distributed to millions of subscribers across History Hit TV, HistoryHit.com, and History Hit’s podcast network and social channels, together with Little Dot Studios’ network of owned and operated digital and social media accounts, including Timeline World History, Spark and Real Stories.   Endurance left South Georgia for Antarctica on 5 December 1914, carrying 27 men with the goal of reaching the South Pole and ultimately crossing the continent. However, when nearing Antarctica the ship became trapped in pack ice and the crew were forced to spend the winter in the frozen landscape. Read more about their epic journey and one of history’s greatest stories here. The crew of Shackleton’s Endurance play football on the ice of the Weddell Sea, with the trapped vessel in the background.Image Credit: Royal Geographical Society / Alamy Stock Photo

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, strings of explorers ventured to the world’s most extreme regions in search of glory, knowledge and adventure. For many, the ultimate aim was to reach the North or South Poles, or to discover the Northwest Passage, a fabled Arctic sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. But the stories of triumphant journeys to the world’s final frontiers are also often stories of hardships, struggle and death. For every polar explorer who made it out alive, there are dozens more that succumbed to starvation, drowning, mutiny, frosty temperatures and the polar wasteland. From the mysterious disappearance of the Franklin expedition to S. A. Andrée’s disastrous attempt to reach the North Pole in a hydrogen balloon, here are 5 polar expeditions that ended in tragedy. 1. The Franklin Expedition (1845-1846) Before the days of the Panama Canal, European explorers raced to discover the Northwest passage, a theorised route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans passing through the Arctic Ocean above Canada. One such explorer was Sir John Franklin. In May 1845, the Franklin Expedition set out from England on an expedition to search for the passage. His fleet comprised two vessels, the HMS Terror and the HMS Erebus, and some 129 men. Neither vessel nor any of the men survived. Franklin himself is known to have died in June 1947, but some of the crew remained alive until April 1848. An 1848 search party discovered the graves of three of Franklin’s men on Beechey Island. A later expedition, in 1859, found further remains on King William Island. The exact details of the Franklin Expedition’s demise are contested, though it’s thought that scurvy and malnutrition played a hand in some of the men’s deaths. Later analysis of the bones of some of Franklin’s men revealed evidence of cannibalism. In 2014, the wreck of the HMS Erebus was discovered in Canada’s Queen Maud Gulf. The HMS Terror was found at the bottom of the same body of water in 2016. 2. The Polaris Expedition (1871-1873) The Polaris Expedition of 1871, led by American explorer Charles Francis Hall, hoped to be the first to reach the North Pole. The group set off on the vessel Polaris from New York bound for the Arctic, but rifts within the team quickly emerged. The party made it as far as northern Greenland when the harsh winter delayed their journey further north. There, tensions mounted as members of the crew began to question Hall’s leadership. Though Hall was a seasoned explorer by this point, he had no experience as a leader. The expedition’s scientist Emil Bessels and meteorologist Frederick Meyer soon turned on Hall, defying his authority. Suddenly, Hall fell ill, a sickness he responded to by accusing Bessels of poisoning him. Hall died soon after. The surviving men embarked on a treacherous return journey south, which saw them split up, drift on an ice floe, wreck the Polaris on the shores of Greenland and eventually be rescued after a bitter winter. Hall’s body was discovered in 1968. Upon examination, experts concluded he had ingested large quantities of arsenic before his death, possibly suggesting that Hall’s fears of a poisoning had been well-founded. 3. The Jeannette Expedition (1879-1881) The USS Jeanette departed from San Francisco in July 1879, carrying a party of men attempting to make the first-ever successful journey to the North Pole. In September of that year, the vessel became trapped in sea ice. The ship remained wedged for nearly two years before eventually sinking in June 1881. The ship’s crew were left stranded on the ice, nearly 500 miles away from the Siberian mainland. They set off across the frosty wasteland on sleds, towing two smaller vessels which they eventually deployed to carry them to the shores of northern Russia. Of the 33 men that departed with the Jeanette, just 13 made it back alive. 20 men died on the journey to North Bulun, a Russian settlement where the survivors eventually found refuge. 4. S. A. Andrée Expedition (1897) The Andree Expedition’s crashed hydrogen balloon, photographed by expedition member Nils Strindberg. In 1897, the Swedish aeronaut Solomon August Andrée attempted to fly to the North Pole from the Svalbard archipelago in a hydrogen balloon. The balloon remained in the air for more than 10 hours without descending. After that point, the balloon suffered several scrapes and collisions, enduring roughly 41 sleepless hours of intermittent air time and collisions with the Arctic surface. Eventually, the craft landed safely and the team were forced to make the return journey on the ground. More an aviator than a Polar explorer or navigator, Andrée was ill-prepared for traversing the Arctic terrain. His sled was ineffective, food supplies minimal and his warm clothing insubstantial. More than two months of icy travel later, after setting up camp on a drifting ice floe, Andrée and his two companions arrived at the shores of White Island, also known as Kvitoya, east of Svalbard. Within two weeks, all three men were dead – possibly killed by parasites in the polar bears they had been hunting and eating. The bodies of Andrée and his companions were found more than three decades later, in 1930, by a Norwegian expedition. Amongst the recovered supplies were some rolls of photographic film, the frames of which were later processed, sharing Andrée’s story with the world. 5. The Australasian Antarctic Expedition (1911-1914) By 1910, Australian academic Douglas Mawson had built up a reputation as a fearless and reliable polar explorer. So much so that he was invited to join Captain Robert Scott’s Terra Nova Expedition of 1910-1913. Mawson rejected the invite, however, and embarked on his own polar expedition in 1911. Mawson took a team to an inhospitable and remote portion of Antarctica, where they mapped the land, investigated species and performed a number of successful scientific studies. Things took a turn for the worse when Mawson led a small party on a trip away from base camp. On 10 November 1912, Mawson set off into Antarctica with 16 dogs and two companions, Xavier Mertz and Belgrave Ninnis. Some weeks into the trip, Ninnis fell into a crevasse and died. He took a sled and most of the group’s food supply with him, forcing Mawson and Mertz to eat their dogs to survive. Mertz eventually died, too. Mawson walked alone for 32 days straight across the Antarctic wilderness. After travelling roughly 100 miles on foot, he arrived back at base camp, having torn the soles of his feet off and in a terrible state of health. Read more about the discovery of Endurance. Explore the history of Shackleton and the Age of Exploration. Visit the official Endurance22 website.

The heroic age of Antarctic exploration had many facets to it, but ultimately, one of the biggest prizes was to become the first person to reach the South Pole. Those who were the first would achieve glory and have their names cemented in the history books: those who failed risked losing their lives in their attempt. Despite the danger, it was a glittering enough prize to tempt many. In 1912, two of the biggest names in polar exploration, Robert Scott and Roald Amundsen, launched competing expeditions in their race to reach the South Pole. One would end in triumph, the other in tragedy. Here is the story of Scott and Amundsen’s race to the South Pole and its legacy. Captain Robert Scott Beginning his career in the Royal Navy, Robert Falcon Scott was appointed leader of the British National Antarctic Expedition, better known as the Discovery expedition in 1901, despite having virtually no experience of Antarctic conditions. Although Scott and his men experienced some knife-edge moments, the expedition was generally viewed to be a success, not least because of the discovery of the Polar Plateau. Scott returned to England a hero and found himself welcomed by increasingly elite social circles and offered more senior Navy positions. However, Ernest Shackleton, one of his crew on the Discovery expedition, had begun to launch his own attempts to fund Antarctic expeditions. After Shackleton failed to reach the pole in his Nimrod exhibition, Scott launched a renewed effort “to reach the South Pole, and to secure for the British Empire the honour of this achievement”. He organised funds and a crew to embark on the Terra Nova, taking with him observations and innovations based on his experiences on the Discovery expedition. Captain Robert F. Scott, sitting at a table in his quarters, writing in his diary, during the British Antarctic Expedition. October 1911.Image Credit: Public Domain Roald Amundsen Born into a Norwegian maritime family, Amundsen was captivated by John Franklin’s stories of his Arctic expeditions and signed up to the Belgian Antarctic Expedition (1897-99) as a first mate. Although it was a disaster, Amundsen learned valuable lessons about polar exploration, particularly surrounding preparation. In 1903, Amundsen led the first expedition to successfully traverse the fabled Northwest Passage, following several failed attempts in the mid-19th century. During the expedition, he learned from local Inuit people about some of the best techniques to survive in the freezing conditions, including using sled dogs and wearing animal skins and furs rather than wool. On his return home, Amundsen’s primary mission was to raise funds for an expedition to try and reach the North Pole, but after hearing rumours that he may well have already been beaten by the Americans, he decided to reroute and head to Antarctica, aiming to find the South Pole instead. Roald Amundsen, 1925.Image Credit: Preus Museum Anders Beer Wilse, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons The race begins Both Scott and Amundsen departed Europe in June 1910. It was only in October 1910, however, that Scott received Amundsen’s telegraph informing him that he was changing destination and heading south too. Amundsen landed at the Bay of Whales, whilst Scott chose the McMurdo Sound – familiar territory, but 60 miles further from the pole, giving Amundsen an immediate advantage. Scott nonetheless set out with ponies, dogs and motorised equipment. The ponies and motors proved next to useless in the harsh Antarctic climate. Amundsen, on the other hand, successfully created supply depots and had brought with him 52 dogs: he planned to kill some of the dogs en route to eat as one of the few sources of fresh meat, along with seals and penguins. He also came prepared with animal skins, understanding they were much better at repelling water and keeping men warm than the woollen clothes favoured by the British, which became extraordinarily heavy when wet and never dried out. Victory (and defeat) After a relatively uneventful trek, marred only slightly by extreme temperatures and a few quarrels, Amundsen’s group arrived at the South Pole on 14 December 1911, where they left a note declaring their achievement in case they failed to return home. The party returned to their ship a little over a month later. Their accomplishment was announced publicly in March 1912, when they reached Hobart. Scott’s trek, however, was fraught with misery and difficulties. The final group reached the pole on 17 January 1912, over a month after Amundsen, and their defeat severely knocked spirits within the group. With an 862-mile return journey to go, this had a major impact. Combined with bad weather, hunger, exhaustion and less fuel than expected in their depots, Scott’s party began to flag less than halfway through the journey. Robert Falcon Scott’s party of his ill-fated expedition, from left to right at the South Pole: Oates (standing), Bowers (sitting), Scott (standing in front of Union Jack flag on pole), Wilson (sitting), Evans (standing). Bowers took this photograph, using a piece of string to operate the camera shutter.Image Credit: Public Domain The party was meant to be met by a support team with dogs in order to ensure they could manage the return, but a series of bad decisions and unforeseen circumstances meant the party did not arrive on time. By this point, several of the remaining men, including Scott himself, were suffering from severe frostbite. Stuck in their tent due to blizzards and only 12.5 miles from the depot they were frantically racing to find, Scott and his remaining men wrote their farewell letters before dying in their tent. Legacy Despite the tragedy surrounding Scott’s expedition, he and his men have been immortalised in myth and legend: they died, some would argue, in pursuit of a noble cause and showed bravery and courage. Their bodies were discovered 8 months later and a cairn erected over them. They had dragged 16kg of Antarctic fossils with them – an important geological and scientific discovery which helped prove the theory of continental drift. Over the course of the 20th century, Scott has come under increasing fire for his lack of preparedness and amateurish approach which cost the lives of his men. Amundsen, on the other hand, remains a figure whose legacy basks in quiet glory. He subsequently disappeared, never to be found, flying on a rescue mission in the Arctic in 1928, but his two most important achievements, the traversing of the Northwest Passage and becoming the first man to reach the South Pole, have ensured his name lives on in the history books. Read more about the discovery of Endurance. Explore the history of Shackleton and the Age of Exploration. Visit the official Endurance22 website.

Maritime history is well-provisioned with alluring mysteries of lost ships and unexplained shipwrecks. From the vanishing of Franklin’s 1845 Arctic expedition to the explosion of the USS Maine in Havana Bay, these tangled loose ends compare with history’s greatest ghost ship mysteries and the deadliest shipwrecks in history. Here are 4 enduring maritime mysteries. 1. The explosion of the USS Maine In 1898, the United States Navy ship Maine exploded in Havana Bay, Cuba. A battleship commissioned only four years earlier, it was stationed in Havana Harbor to protect American interests during the Cuban War of Independence. This was done at the urging of the assistant secretary of the navy, the future President Theodore Roosevelt. Its mysterious explosion and sinking on 15 February killed 268 sailors. Was it an act of war by the Spanish, jealous of American ambitions in Cuba over which their own control was slipping? Or was the explosion instead the result of a spontaneous combustion in the ship’s coal bunkers? The next day, President McKinley wrote that the United States “can afford to withhold its judgement and not strike an avenging blow until the truth is known.” USS Maine entering Havana Harbor on 25 January 1898, three weeks before her destruction.Image Credit: Public Domain Roosevelt, however, pronounced the cause as “dirty treachery on the part of the Spaniards”. American newspapers also blamed the Spanish. The heightened atmosphere hastened the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in April that year. This conflict saw the United States expand its territory in the former colonies of the Spanish empire, from Cuba to the Philippines. 2. The failed Franklin expedition The vanishing of Sir John Franklin’s final Arctic expedition has inspired over 170 years of searching. Last seen off the coast of Greenland in 1845 by whalers, the expedition’s ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were outfitted with iron plates and steam engines to withstand the extreme conditions. Their crews sought to discover the Northwest Passage, a route through which trade could take place along the northern coast of North America. It was 14 years until the first traces of Franklin, his ships and crew of 128 were recovered. The physical evidence and Inuit testimony collected by Dr John Rae and Sir Francis Leopold McClintock pointed to complete disaster, despite the expedition having been ably provisioned. Forensic research in the 1980s succeeded in identifying the frozen bodies of crew members on Beechey Island, and the importance of Inuit oral testimony was reasserted in the 1990s. The greatest discoveries took place in 2014 and 2017, however, when the Erebus and Terror themselves were located in the Arctic. The work to reconstruct the movements of Franklin’s men and ships is ongoing and the cause for the expedition’s calamitous end still compellingly uncertain. 3. The disappearance of the Sarah Joe Among the innumerable tales of vessels lost at sea is the case of the Sarah Joe, a five-metre-long motorboat equipped on Sunday morning, 11 February 1979, with supplies for a fishing excursion. It was the property of Robert Malaiakini, who named it after his parents. While Robert stayed onshore on Maui, the second-largest of the Hawaiian Islands, his twin brother Ralph and four of his friends sailed south into calm, lake-like waters. That afternoon, a chaotic squall descended on the sea around Maui. Other sailors reported their vessels standing on their sterns in towering waves. After the Sarah Joe was reported missing at 5 o’clock, the coastguard was notified. But having searched for days alongside the local community, they found no trace of the boat. Malaiakini and his friends never returned from where they set off in Hawaii. But nine years later and 3,750 miles to the west, a Hawaii-registered boat was discovered in the Marshall Islands. While conducting marine research on Taongi Atoll, one of the initial searchers John Naughton identified the fibreglass hull as the Sarah Joe. Nearby, the remains of Malaiakini’s friend, Scott Moorman, were found buried in a grave with a cross made from driftwood. Short of delivering closure to the families of the missing, the discovery raised new questions, not least who buried Moorman and what happened to the other men. Artists impression of Waratah at sea.Image Credit: State Library of New South Wales, Public Domain 4. The vanishing of the SS Waratah In July 1909, the 142-metre-long British passenger ship Waratah was en route between the South African cities of Durban and Cape Town when it vanished with its 211 passengers and crew. Waratah was built one year earlier in Glasgow in order to operate between Europe and Australia, via the Colony of Natal in South Africa. Its disappearance and presumed sinking took place on its second voyage. To date, no trace of the ship has been found, though theories advanced to explain its disappearance include a giant wave, a cargo shift inside the Waratah’s hold and an exceptionally large whirlpool. Read more about maritime history, Ernest Shackleton and the Age of Exploration. Follow the search for Shackleton’s lost ship at Endurance22.

The golden age of polar exploration in the early 20th century did not just require an almost superhuman level of courage, determination and physical exertion from the men on Arctic and Antarctic expeditions: it also made use of pioneering new technologies and innovations in order to make these journeys not only possible, but viable of achieving some degree of success. From food and clothing to maritime technology, here are 4 ways in which polar exploration benefited from and helped generate innovation and change. 1. Clothing At the start of the 20th century, British explorers primarily used wool clothing on their polar expeditions, often topped by what was known as a gabardine suit. This was cutting edge for the time: made from extremely tightly woven cotton treated with waterproof materials, it was somewhat breathable but could still let water in, soaking the wool below which could then take days to dry out – if it wasn’t drenched again before. The Norwegian expedition teams used animal skins and hides as waterproof outer layers, but these lacked breathability and were extremely hot and sweaty for those trapped inside them. Once wet, they also proved to be extremely heavy. Ultimately, none of these natural fibres were really up to the job. Down suits – which had been laughed at when they were first created – proved to be essential kit by the mid-20th century, and the quest for the best materials in which to perform acts of physical exertion in extreme temperatures also helped lead to the development of Goretex in the 1970s. Goretex was a manmade material which was both waterproof and breathable – features that would have made the earliest polar expeditions infinitely easier. Today, it is a must-have for mountaineers, hikers and those who explore more hostile terrains, including the Arctic and Antarctic. Robert Falcon Scott’s Pole party of his ill-fated expedition, from left to right at the Pole: Oates (standing), Bowers (sitting), Scott (standing in front of Union Jack flag on pole), Wilson (sitting), Evans (standing). Bowers took this photograph, using a piece of string to operate the camera shutter.Image Credit: Public Domain 2. Food Voyages to the polar regions needed to take huge quantities of food with them: firstly because expeditions could last years, but also because the extreme cold and intense physical exertion meant that the men on them needed to consume huge amounts of food to provide them with sufficient energy. Many believe 19th and 20th-century polar explorers seriously underestimated the number of calories needed in their diets. By the early 20th century, sailors were aware of the dangers of scurvy and were able to take steps to mitigate the disease, but finding calorie-dense food which also provided an appropriate level of nutrients was extremely difficult. On some of the earliest Antarctic expeditions, men ate a lot of fat (in the form of butter, cheese and chocolate), biscuits and pemmican (ground meat mixed with fat), along with occasional meat from penguins, seals or horses. After Scott’s disastrous expedition to the South Pole, where part of the issue was insufficient calories, dieticians began to think more seriously about calorie-rich foods. Chocolate, cheese and ‘Polar Pate’ (very similar to pemmican) are still all popular foods today, but the dawn of processed food and vitamin and mineral supplements proved to change the game for polar explorers. Edmund Hillary famously took Kendal Mint Cake (basically made from sugar, glucose, water and peppermint oil) to the summit of Mount Everest with him in 1953. 3. Ice-breaking ships The idea of ice-breaking ships was not a new one: many consider that the first icebreakers had been pioneered by Russians in the 11th century who lived on the north coast, which was frozen for large parts of the year. However, it was only in the 19th century that the idea became more widespread. The first real modern icebreaker was a Russian navy ship, the Yermak, which was built in England. The ship was able to run over and crush pack ice, making serious polar exploration viable in a way it had previously not been. Icebreakers could still be crushed in the ice of course, but they had a much higher chance of success than anything that had gone before. Icebreakers continue to be used today: although powered differently from the first icebreakers, they serve a similar function. Ultimately, ships going to the polar regions face similar chances of finding themselves stuck in ice as their predecessors. An early 20th-century photograph of the Russian icebreaker, the Yermak.Image Credit: Public Domain 4. Navigation At the start of the 20th century, Antarctica was barely mapped: it took until the 1980s for an accurate map of the continent to be produced. The Arctic, on the other hand, was relatively well understood and the first successful journey through the Northwest Passage further cemented existing knowledge. Those travelling across Antarctica, therefore, were using relatively rudimentary navigating techniques such as navigating using the sun and stars, as well as with compasses. In blizzards and on uncharted terrain, these could be difficult and provide inaccurate readings, particularly when the men were exhausted or ill. The more expeditions made to Antarctica, the better the mapping of the continent became and the easier navigation was: explorers were no longer pioneers, but were able to track their positions on maps. The advent of GPS (Global Positioning System) in the 1970s and 1980s also changed the game forever: exact locations could be pinpointed and precise routes followed, reducing some of the risk associated with glaciers and crevasses in the ice. Read more about the discovery of Endurance. Explore the history of Shackleton and the Age of Exploration. Visit the official Endurance22 website.

For as long as humans have been traversing the seas, ships have been lost to the depths. And although most vessels that sink beneath the waves are eventually forgotten, some remain prized treasures sought for generations. The 16th-century Portuguese vessel Flor de la Mar, for example, has been the centre of countless search expeditions eager to recover her priceless lost cargo of diamonds, gold and precious stones. Ships like Captain Cook’s Endeavour, on the other hand, remain sought after for their invaluable historical significance. From a Cornish wreck known as ‘El Dorado of the Seas’ to some of the most iconic vessels in seafaring history, here are 5 shipwrecks that are yet to be discovered. 1. Santa Maria (1492) The notorious explorer Christopher Columbus set sail for the New World in 1492 with three ships: Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria. During the course of Columbus’ voyage, which took him to the Caribbean, Santa Maria sank. According to legend, Columbus left a cabin boy at the helm while we went off to sleep. Shortly after, the inexperienced boy ran the ship aground. Santa Maria was stripped of any valuables, and it sank the following day. The whereabouts of Santa Maria remain a mystery to this day. Some suspect it lies on the seabed near present-day Haiti. In 2014, the marine archaeologist Barry Clifford claimed he had found the famed wreckage, but UNESCO later dispelled his discovery as a different ship some two or three centuries younger than Santa Maria. Early 20th-century painting of Christopher Columbus’ caravelle, Santa Maria.Image Credit: Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo 2. Flor de la Mar (1511) Flor de la Mar, or Flor do Mar, is one of the most renowned undiscovered shipwrecks anywhere on Earth, thought to be filled with vast diamonds, gold and untold riches. Despite being notorious for springing leaks and running into trouble, Flor de la Mar was called to assist in Portugal’s conquest of Malacca (in present-day Malaysia) in 1511. Upon its return voyage to Portugal, laden with riches, Flor de la Mar sank in a storm on 20 November 1511. It’s thought Flor de la Mar was in or near the Strait of Malacca, which runs between modern Malaysia and the Indonesian island of Sumatra, when she sank. The wreck, and its reputed $2 billion of treasure and precious stones, have yet to be found, though not for lack of trying: treasure hunter Robert Marx has spent around $20 million searching for the ship, which he has described as “the richest vessel ever lost at sea”. 3. The Merchant Royal (1641) The Merchant Royal is an English vessel that sank in 1641, off of Land’s End in Cornwall, England. A trade ship, The Merchant Royal was carrying a cargo of gold and silver believed to be worth tens, if not hundreds, of millions today. Nicknamed ‘El Dorado of the Seas’, The Merchant Royal has attracted a great deal of interest over the years, with amateur treasure hunters and marine archaeologists alike looking for it. A search operation by Odyssey Marine Exploration in 2007 uncovered a wreckage, but coins from the site suggested they’d discovered Spanish frigate rather than the much-prized Merchant Royal. In 2019, the ship’s anchor was retrieved from the waters off of Cornwall, but the ship itself has yet to be located. 4. Le Griffon (1679) Digitised image of Le Griffon from page 44 of “Annals of Fort Mackinac”Image Credit: British Library via Flickr / Public Domain Le Griffon, also referred to as simply Griffin, was a French vessel operating in America’s Great Lakes in the 1670s. She set sail into Lake Michigan from Green Bay in September 1679. But the ship, along with its crew of six men and cargo of fur, never reached its destination of Mackinac Island. It’s unclear whether Le Griffon fell prey to a storm, navigational difficulties or even foul play. Now referred to as the ‘holy grail of Great Lakes shipwrecks’, Le Griffon has been the focus of many search expeditions in recent decades. In 2014, two treasure hunters thought they’d uncovered the famed wreckage, but their discovery turned out to be a far younger ship. A book, titled The Wreck of the Griffon, outlined in 2015 the theory that a Lake Huron wreckage discovered in 1898 is actually Le Griffon. 5. HMS Endeavour (1778) The English explorer ‘Captain’ James Cook is known for landing off Australia’s east coast aboard his ship, HMS Endeavour, in 1770. But the Endeavour had a long and illustrious career after Cook. Sold off after Cook’s voyage of discovery, Endeavour was renamed the Lord Sandwich. She was then employed by Britain’s Royal Navy to transport troops during the American War of Independence. In 1778, Lord Sandwich was sunk, intentionally, in or near Newport Harbour, Rhode Island, one of several sacrificed vessels used to form a blockade against approaching French ships. In February 2022, marine researchers declared they’d discovered the wreck, a claim which was corroborated by the Australian National Maritime Museum. But some experts said it was premature to suggest the wreck was the Endeavour. HMS Endeavour off the coast of New Holland after being repaired. Painted in 1794 by Samuel Atkins.Image Credit: National Library of Australia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Read more about maritime history, Ernest Shackleton and the Age of Exploration. Follow the search for Shackleton’s lost ship at Endurance22.

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