Shackleton's Quest: First Close-Up Images Reveal the Legendary Explorer's Last Ship

More than a century after Sir Ernest Shackleton last walked its deck, his final ship has been seen in stunning detail for the first time — draped in coral, teeming with fish, and still bearing the portholes of a bygone era of exploration.

In July 2026, an expedition led by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society (RCGS) in partnership with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) obtained the first close-up images of Quest, the last ship of famed Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton. The wreck lies 390 meters beneath the surface of the Labrador Sea, off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador.

The images were captured by WHOI's Falcon remotely operated vehicle (ROV) and the DSV Alvin, the same submersible that first visited the wreck of the RMS Titanic four decades ago. The expedition team observed that much of the ship's structure remains intact, including the bow, deck, and recognizable portholes, though the main mast has collapsed. The wreck is now an artificial reef, covered in pink corals and surrounded by cod, redfish, and wolf fish.

Three things worth knowing:

Quest was originally a Norwegian sealing ship before Shackleton purchased it for his final Antarctic expedition in 1921. After Shackleton's death later that same year, the ship continued sealing in Arctic waters for another 40 years before sinking in 1962.
The wreck was first discovered in 2024 using side-scan sonar, but this was the first time visual imaging technology could reveal the ship's condition in detail. The expedition also built a digital twin of the wreck using photogrammetry.
The expedition found that commercial fishing nets have become entangled around parts of the ship, highlighting the growing problem of abandoned fishing gear (ghost nets) damaging historic shipwrecks on the seafloor.

For expedition leader John Geiger, seeing Quest for the first time was a deeply moving experience. "At first, there was a lot of darkness, but suddenly the bow emerges as you are going toward it," he said. "To think that Shackleton was standing on that deck a century ago — it's incredible."