HMS Endurance, which set sail for the Antarctic continent in 1914, had a sturdy outer shell strengthened for collisions but lacked internal diagonal beams to protect it from crushing sea ice. Frank Hurley/Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge/Getty Images

“She was doomed, no ship built by human hands could have withstood the strain.”

When polar explorer Ernest Shackleton wrote this journal entry on October 27, 1915, his dreams of reaching Antarctica had been famously crushed — along with his ship, HMS Endurance. The vessel had been ice-locked since January in the Weddell Sea, and by October’s end, the ice had torn off the rudder, ripped the keel, broken the deck beams in the engine room and punched holes in the sides of the boat.

The harrowing events that followed, w

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