After 62 years of being lost under the waves of the North Atlantic, the final ship of Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton was recently discovered off the coast of Labrador.
Quest, originally named Foca I, started its life as a sealing ship before serving as a polar expedition vessel for Shackleton. Previously, Shackleton made a name for himself serving as an officer during the Discovery expedition, which saw British explorers to Antarctica reach the farthest southern point towards the South Pole at the time. Later, during the Nimrod expedition, this furthest south record was yet again broken.
Following an unsuccessful venture to cross Antarctica from coast to coast after his ship Endurance became trapped in pack ice and sank, Shackleton led a daring 720-nautical mile voyage from Antarctica to the island of South Georgia. He would return to South Georgia aboard Quest in 1922 for yet another Antarctic expedition but died there of a heart attack.
Quest would go on serve as an expedition vessel for a London to Greenland voyage in the 1930s, a sealer and a minesweeper during WWII. The ship would return to sealing duties in 1946 until 1962, when Quest struck ice and sank off the coast of Labrador.
There, Quest sat for the next 62 years lost to time, 390 metres beneath the waters of the Labrador Sea. In 2024, an expedition by the Royal Canadian Geographic Society (RCGS) discovered the vessel just 2.5 kilometres from its last reported position.
“We were successful in locating Sir Ernest Shackleton’s last ship, Quest, in the Labrador Sea. It’s lying under 390 metres of water,” said John Geiger, CEO of the RCGS. “This is a very important vessel. Historically, it was the final expedition ship of Sir Ernest Shackleton.”
The hunt for Quest, according to the team, was mired by technical issues during the first part of the expedition. The calibration test of their vessel initially failed, and problems were discovered in the Leeway Odyssey’s tow winch, necessitating a stop in St. Anthony, N.L. for repairs.
After a 17-hour search, the crew of the Leeway Odyssey finally discovered the wreckage of Quest with the use of sonar around 15 nautical miles off the coast of Labrador. The search area of the RCGS crew was pinpointed in an area of 24 square nautical miles, based off the last known location of Shackleton’s last vessel.
“That search was determined based on our analysis of the uncertainty of the navigation position where the ship was lost,” said David Mearns, Search Director in the Quest expedition. “We went out there expecting that the seabed would be quite a difficult challenge in terms of [being] a target-rich environment with boulders left by icebergs moving past the search zone. But in the end, it was fairly flat and featureless.”
At 24 metres in length with a 7.3-metre beam, the schooner-rigged steamship was found mostly intact, save for a broken mast hanging over the port side of the ship. Sonar imaging of Quest indicted the vessel is sitting upright on the seafloor.
“Suddenly, as if out of nowhere, the clear signs of a shipwreck started to emerge… It was so obviously Quest. It was so obviously a ship to begin with, but it had all the features — we studied Quest for so long,” said Geiger. “There was a huge amount of excitement throughout the ship. Everyone on our team who was present; there was a sense of euphoria.”
With this first discovery under their belt, the team that uncovered Quest’s location are hungry to learn more about the long-lost vessel. According to Geiger, he and his team have ideations about returning to the site to do more reconnaissance in the near future. He said that the plan, so far, is to collaborate with Newfoundland and Labrador’s Marine Institute to bring a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) down to the site of the wreckage.
“Like everyone else, I want more. We all want to see more. We all want to see the name on the ship. We want to get into the ship; we want to see what’s left of it and what the condition of the ship is,” said Geiger. “There is a plan, and we’re likely heading back within the near term.”
