Endurance unveiled: McGill team helps bring Shackleton’s lost ship to life in 3D

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After more than 100 years submerged in the icy depths of Antarctica, Sir Ernest Shackleton’s long lost ship Endurance has been revealed in stunning 3D detail — and with help from a team of McGill researchers.

On Friday, a digital scan of the ship was unveiled, showing intricate details like plates and boots from the crew. The scan, composed of about 25,000 high-resolution images taken when the ship was rediscovered in 2022, arrived just ahead of a new National Geographic documentary, Endurance, which premieres Saturday in the United Kingdom.

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But helping behind the scenes were researchers from McGill, led by Professor James Forbes and students Thomas Hitchcox, Alex Walsh, Amro Al Baali and Jonathon Arsenault. The researchers worked to enhance the navigation system used by the autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) that captured the images.

“This project was a massive team effort, and our students were the real driving force behind it,” Forbes said in an interview. “Their hard work on improving the navigation system was what allowed us to get such precise and accurate images of Endurance.”

The ship, part of Shackleton’s ill-fated 1914 Antarctic expedition, became trapped in ice and eventually sank. When the wreck was discovered more than a century later, it was remarkably well-preserved. However, capturing detailed images of the ship presented a significant challenge because of the deep-sea conditions. That’s where McGill’s researchers came in.

“Our role was to improve the navigation solution,” Forbes said. “By reducing the uncertainty in the vehicle’s position, we ensured that every image was captured with more precision, allowing the 3D model to be as accurate as possible.”

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Nico Vincent from Deep Ocean Search, who co-led the expedition and developed the technology alongside Voyis Imaging, called the digital scan “absolutely fabulous.”

Speaking to the BBC, he remarked: “The wreck is almost intact, like she sank yesterday.” Vincent added the scan not only offers a breathtaking view of the Endurance, but also provides new opportunities for scientific research.

For Forbes’ team at McGill, the Endurance project was the culmination of six years of research on underwater navigation systems, supported by more than $400,000 in grants, including from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). They only joined the Endurance project in 2022, but Forbes credited the collective effort from his students for overcoming the real-world challenges the project presented, often dealing with “messy” data.

“My students are amazing. I’m so grateful and lucky to have such talented, hardworking, amazing students,” he said.

Originally from Ontario, Forbes now lives in Pointe-Claire with his wife and two kids. He joined McGill’s engineering department in 2011, and said this the proudest achievement of his career, but also remains quick to highlight the collective effort.

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Today, he continues to teach at McGill alongside his research. Teaching three classes, Forbes enjoys incorporating real-world applications into his lessons. One recent assignment involved solving a navigation problem for a small robot, which he described as a “baby” version of the challenge his team faced on the Endurance project.

“If you can solve that, then that is the baby version of what we did on Endurance,” he said.

Looking ahead with his research, the technology developed by his McGill team has potential beyond shipwrecks, Forbes explained. It could also be used for inspecting subsea infrastructure, like wind turbines in the English Channel or hydroelectric dams. He said these surveys could be conducted with less oversight from ships, improving efficiency and precision.

“I now want to focus more and more on underwater navigation,” he said. “There’s a lot of navigation work being done for autonomous driving, but the underwater world is still largely unexplored when it comes to enhanced navigation solutions. No pun intended.”

hnorth@postmedia.com

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