Shackleton's ship beneath the ice: discovering the Endurance - Professor John Shears

In March 2022, Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance was discovered at the bottom of the Weddell Sea by the Endurance22 expedition. The ship had not been seen since it was crushed by ice and sank in 1915, forcing Shackleton and his men to make an astonishing escape, spending months in makeshift camps on the ice floes drifting northwards until they reached the inhospitable and uninhabited Elephant Island.

The Endurance22 expedition brought together world-leading marine archaeologists, engineers, technicians, and sea-ice scientists on South African icebreaker SA Agulhas II, one of the largest and most modern polar research vessels in the world. Organised and funded by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust (FMHT), the team navigated its way through the heavy sea ice, freezing temperatures and harsh weather, in a quest to be the first to successfully locate Endurance.

Our speaker, Professor John Shears, is the Endurance22 Expedition Leader. Join us to hear first hand from John about the expedition and the excitement of finally locating Shackleton’s lost ship.

About the speaker

Professor John Shears is a veteran polar geographer and expedition leader. John has a first class degree and PhD in Geography from the University of Southampton. After successfully completing his academic studies, John began his career in polar research and exploration in 1990. He has over 30 years of experience working in both Antarctica and the Arctic, first with the British Antarctic Survey, then the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, and now running his own polar consultancy business, Shears Polar Limited.

In recent years, John’s polar expeditions have focused on the search for Shackleton’s ship Endurance in Antarctica. In 2019, he was the expedition leader for the Weddell Sea Expedition. Then in 2022 he was the expedition leader of Endurance22, which made the historic discovery of Endurance on 5 March 2022 at a depth of 3,000m under the ice.

John is a long-standing Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a former Vice-President of the Society, and he is a Chartered Geographer. He continues to work with the Society on a wide range of polar, educational and climate change projects. John was awarded the Polar Medal by Her Majesty the Queen in 2019 in recognition of his “outstanding achievement and service to the United Kingdom in the field of polar research”. In 2023, John became Visiting Professor in the School of Geography and Environmental Sciences at the University of Southampton.

Booking information
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