Shears showed striking imagery of Endurance during a talk that focused on the enormous challenges and teamwork required for the Endurance 22 triumph in locating Shackleton’s legendary ship, Endurance, which has lain 3,008 metres beneath the Weddell Sea for more than 100 years. He also played the trailer for the major National Geographic/Disney film titled Endurance, which has just been released.

Geiger recounted the less-well-known but fascinating story of Shackleton’s final expedition aboard Quest, which was discovered in much shallower water, at 390 metres, off the coast of Labrador on June 9, 2024. Shackleton died aboard Quest during that expedition in 1922, marking the end of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. The ship was later sold to a Norwegian family and was used as a vessel for seal hunting until it sank in 1962 in the Labrador Sea.

Referencing the differences in scale between the highly resourced multi-million-dollar Endurance 22 expedition, with the involvement in U.S. giant National Geographic, and the RCGS’s more modest Shackleton Quest Expedition, supported by donors, Geiger expressed his surprise when he looked in the program and discovered he was speaking after Shears. “It’s a bit like when Led Zeppelin opened for The Monkees,” he said to laughter from an audience of more than 1000.

Shears put a team of 110 people together to find Shackleton’s most famous shipwreck, the Endurance, in 2022. He recounted the epic tale of Shackleton’s nearly two-year marathon of being stranded on the ice with his crew of 28 people after his ship Endurance sank in the Weddell Sea in 1915.

Also speaking was Mike Robinson, chief executive of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, who talked about Shackleton’s stint as head of that organization, quoting from Shackleton’s detailed job application from 1902, titled Qualifications and Testimonials. Several references from the job application described Shackleton at the age of 29 as a “marvel of intelligent energy” who was “never tired, always cheerful, and is exceedingly popular with everyone,” and a skilled editor of the South Polar Times, a newsletter published aboard one of his many expeditions to the Antarctic.

Sven Habermann, a historical object conservator based in Connemara, Ireland, spoke about his work restoring the cabin Shackleton died in after it was removed from Quest by later owners. It ended up as a garden shed in Norway before its restoration. The lovingly restored cabin was the subject of a major documentary by the BBC.