Legendary Ships 100 Years Apart | National Geographic Documentary Films

This ship sank more than 100 years ago, and this is how its modern equivalent found the wreck. I'm historian Dan Snow, and I was privileged to be on board Aulus 2 on our mission to find Endurance's wreck.

Endurance was just 144 ft long; Aulus is three times the size. Endurance was built for strength, with a reinforced wooden hull designed for resilience, but that wasn't enough to stop the ship from sinking after being crushed by thick ice.

100 years later, the steel Aulus, capable of breaking through 3 ft of ice, was sent to search for Endurance's wreck. Endurance was an engineering marvel of its day, with a 350 horsepower steam engine, joints intricately constructed for maximum strength, and sides sheathed in Greenheart, a wood heavier than iron.

But Aulus demonstrates how far polar vessels have evolved. In 2022, Aulus carried on board a modern miracle of technology: the subsea drones that scoured the seafloor and discovered Endurance, breaking several world records along the way.

Endurance is now streaming on Disney+.