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.

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.