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Phyllite Rock and Ernest Shackleton's Ill-Fated Endurance Expedition

Phyllite Rock and Ernest Shackleton's Ill-Fated Endurance Expedition

A piece of rock.

As part of our twentieth anniversary celebration in October, we featured our small phyllite sample from Point Wild, a narrow point on the north coast of Elephant Island. This tiny bit of land is most known for being a key location in Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated Endurance expedition. The crew camped and managed to survive at Point Wild for four months of Antarctic winter before being rescued in August 1916.

Black and white photo of a Group posing for the image.
An abandoned shipwreck.

While the Endurance sunk on November 21, 1915, the wreckage was recently found at a depth of 3,008 meters in the Weddell Sea in March of 2022. It was only about 7km south of the location fixed by Frank Worsley (the ship's captain), who used a sextant to record the position of its sinking after several months of the ship being surrounded by and eventually crushed by ice.

Photo credits: Erica Maletic, National Geographic

 

To find out more about the collection, visit the Polar Rock Repository's database.