HMS Endurance was an icebreaker that served as the Royal Navy ice patrol ship between 1991 and 2008. Built in Norway as MV Polar Circle, she was chartered by the Royal Navy in 1991 as HMS Polar Circle, before being purchased outright and renamed HMS Endurance in 1992 as a replacement for the previous HMS Endurance whose hull had been weakened by striking an iceberg.
Endurance was a class 1 icebreaker. Her two Bergen BRG8 diesel engines produced over 8000 shaft horsepower enabling her to travel through ice up to 1 metre (3ft 3in) thick at 3 knots (5.6km/h).[1] Her propulsion system used a computer-controlled variable-pitch propeller and stern and bow thrusters. She carried two ice-modified Lynx helicopters which were instrumental in the making of the BBC Documentary Series Planet Earth in 2006.
The ship was laid up in Portsmouth from 2009 to 2016, following serious damage caused by flooding following an error during routine maintenance on a sea suction strainer. In October 2013 it was reported that she would be scrapped;[2] in July 2015 the vessel was offered for sale for further use or recycling and left Portsmouth under tow to the Leyal ship recycling facility in Turkey on 1 June 2016.[3]
Career
MV Polar Circle was built in Norway in 1990 by Ulstein Hatlo for Rieber Shipping. The Royal Navy chartered her for eight months as HMS Polar Circle from 21 November 1991. She was bought outright and renamed HMS Endurance on 9 October 1992.
Endurance provided a sovereign presence in polar waters, performing hydrographic surveys and supporting the British Antarctic Survey in Antarctica. Her usual deployment saw her in the Southern Ocean and returning to the UK through tropical waters each year. Later, a longer, 18-month deployment was designed to maximise her time available for BAS usage.
In 1997, Endurance made the first visit to Argentina by a Royal Naval vessel since the Falklands War, calling at the capital, Buenos Aires, en route to her Antarctic deployment. That she was seen as a scientific and research vessel rather than a warship facilitated the visit and helped to normalise relations between Argentina and the United Kingdom. She visited the Argentinian port of Mar del Plata in 1998 and returned to Buenos Aires in 2002.[4]
Queen Elizabeth II with Admiral Sir Alan West (as he then was) on board Endurance for the Fleet Review
In July 2007, the United Kingdom offered Endurance to supply Argentina's Antarctic bases after their ARAAlmirante Irizar icebreaker suffered extensive damage in a fire.[5][6]
Although she enjoyed a varied, purposeful career as the UK's sole ice patrol vessel, Endurance's later years were problematic and ended in ignominy. After her 2004 docking period in Falmouth, the ship suffered a minor accident which resulted in her listing badly when the drydock she was situated in flooded up. The months after the refit were troublesome and the ship suffered numerous debilitating machinery failures. This was to become something of a theme over the next four years as the ship's crew struggled to keep her serviceable, set against more demanding challenges.
Docking in Puerto Belgrano 2006
During survey work in Antarctica in January 2006, the ship's engineering staff discovered that her rudder was apparently loose on the stock. Her work period was cut short and she returned to Mare Harbour in the Falkland Islands for further inspections. Det Norske Veritas, the ship's assurance certification company, instructed that the ship should dock at the nearest available port – the nearest large enough being Puerto Belgrano, Argentina's largest naval base, where Endurance docked in mid-March 2006.
Without hotel services on board, the ship's company moved to shore-side accommodation in the city of Bahía Blanca, some twenty kilometres west of Puerto Belgrano. The rudder was removed for repairs, and once it was on the floor of the drydock, a dockers' strike followed.[7][8] The ship remained there for nearly three weeks. Picket lines formed at the gates of the naval base, preventing the ship's company from relieving the stranded duty watch on board.
When the strike broke, the rudder was replaced and welded into position and the ship left Puerto Belgrano in early April 2006. She returned to Portsmouth via Lisbon and to drydock again for further engineering work on the rudder and stock.
2008 near loss
In December 2008, while on an 18-month deployment, Endurance suffered extensive flooding to her machinery spaces and lower accommodation decks resulting in the near loss of the ship.[9] A serious engine room flood left her without power or propulsion,[10] and she was towed to Punta Arenas by a Chilean tug. After an extensive survey was completed, the estimates to refit the ship were put at around £30m.[11] On 8 April 2009 Endurance arrived off Portsmouth, on the semi-submersible transporter ship MVTarget.[12]
The Royal Navy inquiry found that the flood happened while a sea-water strainer was being cleaned, in an attempt to improve the production of fresh water. The air lines controlling a hull valve were incorrectly reconnected, resulting in the valve opening and an inability to close it. The pipe installation fell below generally accepted standards, which made reconnection of the air lines ambiguous.[9]
The inquiry also found that, due to manpower constraints, the ship did not have a system maintainer and that clarity of engineering command had been lost, with no-one clearly in charge of risk-management. It was fortunate that, without propulsion, Endurance had drifted over an area shallow enough for anchors to be let go and to hold the ship in position, otherwise, "there was a very real possibility that she would have been lost either by running ashore or by succumbing to the flood." The inquiry judged that the ship's company responded well to control damage in challenging conditions.[9][13]
Ice Patrol (TV series)
In 2009, National Geographic Channel ran a four-episode documentary series on Endurance. Five ran the same series the following year under the name Ice Patrol, with the final episode showing what happened the day the ship almost sank.[14]
Replacement
On 9 September 2010, speculation in the press suggested it was likely that Endurance would be scrapped[15] and replaced with another icebreaker from Norway.[16]
On 22 March 2011, it was announced that the Royal Navy intended to hire MV Polarbjørn, to be renamed HMSProtector, for three years whilst a final decision on whether to repair or scrap Endurance is made.[17]HMSProtector was purchased in September 2013.[18]
It was announced on 7 October 2013 that Endurance would be sold for scrap, as it was not 'economically viable' to repair the damage sustained in 2008.[2] In July 2015 the Ministry of Defence gave advanced notice of sale of the vessel for further use or recycling, noting that "parties interested in acquiring the vessel for future use should note it will require considerable investment".[3] The vessel left Portsmouth under tow to the breakers' yard in Turkey on 1 June 2016.
Link to Sir Ernest Shackleton
Endurance was named after the ship which Sir Ernest Shackleton used in his Antarctic expedition of 1914–1917. The names of Endurance's boats and landing craft continued the Shackleton connection: James Caird and Dudley Docker were named after boats carried by Shackleton's Endurance, Nimrod was named after the ship which Shackleton used on his Antarctic expedition of 1907–1909, and Eddie Shackleton was named after the explorer's son. The motto of Endurance, "fortitudine vincimus" ("by endurance, we conquer"), was also the Shackleton family motto.[19]
Two Royal Navy ships have been called HMS Endurance after Sir Ernest Shackleton's Endurance, the ship crushed in the ice of the Weddell Sea during his 1914–1915 Antarctic expedition. The ships' motto, Fortitudine Vincimus, was Shackleton's family motto.
RFA Diligence was a forward repair ship of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary. Launched in 1981 as a support ship for North Sea oil rigs, she was chartered by the British government to support naval activities during the 1982 Falklands War and was later bought outright as a fleet maintenance vessel. She gave assistance to the damaged USS Tripoli and Princeton in the 1991 Gulf War, and to Sri Lanka after the 2005 tsunami. She typically had deployments of 5-8 years in support of the Trafalgar-class submarine on duty east of Suez, with a secondary role as a mothership for British and US minesweepers in the Persian Gulf. Until 2016 Diligence was set to go out of service in 2020. However in August 2016, the UK Ministry of Defence placed an advert for the sale of RFA Diligence. As of 2016 the option for the delivery of future operational maintenance and repair capability for the RFA remained under consideration. However, the 2021 British defence white paper made no specific mention of the need for this capability. In April 2023, it was revealed that the ship was to be scrapped after no suitable buyers materialised, & she was moved out of 3 Basin across to Fareham Trots to await her final journey to the scrapyard.
HMS Scott is an ocean survey vessel of the Royal Navy, and the only vessel of her class. She is the third Royal Navy ship to carry the name, and the second to be named after the Antarctic explorer, Robert Falcon Scott. She was ordered to replace the survey ship HMS Hecla.
ARA Almirante Irízar is a large icebreaker of the Argentine Navy. She was ordered from a shipyard in Finland in 1975.
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USS Edisto (AGB-2) was a Wind-class icebreaker in the service of the United States Navy and was later transferred to the United States Coast Guard as USCGC Edisto (WAGB-284). She was named after Edisto Island, South Carolina. The island is named after the Native American Edisto Band who inhabited the island and the surrounding area. As of 2011 there is a namesake cutter USCGC Edisto (WPB-1313). The newer Edisto is a 110-foot Island-class patrol boat and is stationed in San Diego County, California.
USS Glacier (AGB-4) was a U.S. Navy, then U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker which served in the first through fifteenth Operation Deep Freeze expeditions. Glacier was the first icebreaker to make her way through the frozen Bellingshausen Sea, and most of the topography in the area is named for her crew members. When built, Glacier had the largest capacity single armature DC motors ever installed on a ship. Glacier was capable of breaking ice up to 20 feet (6.1 m) thick, and of continuous breaking of 4-foot (1.2 m) thick ice at 3 knots.
Endurance was the three-masted barquentine in which Sir Ernest Shackleton and a crew of 27 men sailed for the Antarctic on the 1914–1917 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. The ship, originally named Polaris, was built at Framnæs shipyard and launched in 1912 from Sandefjord in Norway. After her commissioners could no longer pay the shipyard, the ship was bought by Shackleton in January 1914 for the expedition, which would be her first voyage. A year later, she became trapped in pack ice and finally sank in the Weddell Sea off Antarctica on 21 November 1915. All of the crew survived her sinking and were eventually rescued in 1916 after using the ship's boats to travel to Elephant Island and Shackleton, the ship's captain Frank Worsley, and four others made a voyage to seek help.
Frank Arthur Worsley was a New Zealand sailor and explorer who served on Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914–1916, as captain of Endurance. He also served in the Royal Navy Reserve during the First World War.
Polar Star Expeditions was a specialty adventure cruise company owned by Karlsen Shipping Company Ltd. out of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. In 2001, Polar Star began operating a single expedition cruise ship, MV Polar Star, a 87-metre (284 ft) converted Swedish icebreaker with 105 berths. The company conducted cruises mainly in the northern and southern polar and sub-polar regions. Polar Star Expeditions did not have an easy time of it. In 2010, its only vessel lost one of its engines and had to operate part of that season on just one. Then in January 2011, the vessel suffered serious grounding damage in the Antarctic, which led to the failure of the parent company.
HMS Endurance was a Royal Navy ice patrol vessel that served from 1967 to 1991. She came to public notice when she was involved in the Falklands War of 1982. The final surrender of the war, in the South Sandwich Islands, took place aboard Endurance.
Endurance is the act of sustaining prolonged stressful effort.
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The MS Explorer or MV Explorer was a Liberian-registered cruise ship, the first vessel of that kind used specifically to sail the icy waters of the Antarctic Ocean. She was the first cruise ship to sink there, after striking an iceberg on 23 November 2007. All passengers and crew were rescued.
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RRS Shackleton was a Royal Research Ship operated by the British scientific research organisations the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (FIDS), British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) in the Antarctic from 1955 to 1983. She was subsequently operated as a seismic survey vessel under the names Geotek Beta, Profiler and finally Sea Profiler before being scrapped in 2011.
HMS Protector is a Royal Navy ice patrol ship built in Norway in mid 2000. As MV Polarbjørn she operated under charter as a polar research icebreaker and a subsea support vessel. In 2011, she was chartered as a temporary replacement for the ice patrol ship HMS Endurance and was purchased by the British Ministry of Defence in early September 2013. As DNV Ice Class 05 the vessel can handle first year ice up to 0.5 metres (20 in).
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