A SUCCESSFUL QUEST EXPEDITION: SIR ERNEST SHACKLETON’S VESSEL FOUND
An expedition led by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society has discovered the wreck of the famed exploration vessel Quest in the Labrador Sea. Celebrated polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton died aboard Quest in 1922 while en route to Antarctica, marking the end of what some historians call the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration. The wreck lies upright and intact on the seabed in 390 metres of water northwest of St. John’s and east of Battle Harbour, Labrador.
Quest was damaged by ice while on a seal hunt off the Labrador coast in the traditional waters of the Mi’kmaq, Innu and Inuit, and sank on May 5, 1962. The vessel’s ultimate resting place is poignant given that Shackleton originally intended to use Quest for a Canadian Arctic expedition before the government of then-prime Minister Arthur Meighen pulled the plug. Forced to change plans at the eleventh hour, Shackleton then headed south to Antarctica. The find creates a tangible link between Canada and a towering figure in polar exploration.
“Finding Quest is one of the final chapters in the extraordinary story of Sir Ernest Shackleton,” says expedition leader John Geiger, CEO of the RCGS. “Shackleton was known for his courage and brilliance as a leader in times of crisis. The tragic irony is that his was the only death to take place on any of the ships under his direct command.”
Geiger led an international team of experts, including world-renowned shipwreck hunter David Mearns. Expedition members aboard the search vessel Leeway Odyssey hailed from Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Norway and included oceanographers and historians, as well as people with close familial ties to Quest.
The find was the result of months of painstaking research and analysis by Mearns and lead researcher Antoine Normandin. They consulted ships’ logs, newspaper clippings and legal documents, cross-referencing them with historic weather and ice data to determine with a high degree of accuracy Quest’s final resting place on the seabed.
The November/december issue of Canadian
Geographic will document this momentous find in stories and images.