Was the legendary sinking of Endurance in 1915 due to a string of bad luck or a series of fatal design flaws and risky decisions? New research suggests that Sir Ernest Shackleton’s famous polar tale of survival and heroism may have been doomed before the ship even left the port. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

The story of the Endurance is an archetypal tale of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. It began in 1914 when the three-masted ship set sail to the South Pole, led by Shackleton, with the intention of making the first land crossing of Antarctica.

By early 1915, they had reached the Weddell Sea after a long and treacherous voyage, but things quickly went south. The ship had become stuck within the dense

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