The first 3D printed shipwreck model of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s iconic Endurance and its digital counterpart have been unveiled at the Future Labs exhibition at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in West Sussex, which opened yesterday (11 July) and continues through the coming weekend.
The exhibit highlights how “cutting-edge scanning, AI and visualisation technologies are revolutionising access to some of the world’s most remote and fragile heritage sites,” says Elena Lewendon, COO of the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust (FMHT), the UK-registered charity behind what she describes as a “landmark showcase” of the Antarctic shipwreck.
Endurance was crushed by ice and sank in 1915, and 100 years after Shackleton’s death was located 3km deep in the Weddell Sea by the FMHT’s Endurance22 expedition, the culmination of a decade-long search.
The 3D-printed Endurance model is reckoned to be accurate to the millimetre and one of the most detailed wreck models ever made. It was created using ultra-precise scan data captured during the expedition and visitors are also able to see the process used to build it.
Alongside it, interactive touchscreens invite the public to explore the wreck for themselves, navigating across the ship’s deck and seabed to uncover artefacts frozen in time.
Stitched together
The work to produce the models was carried out by Voyis Imaging and Deep Ocean Search. More than 25,000 high-resolution photographs were stitched together using photogrammetry and combined with data from laser scans to reveal the wreck as it lay, down to the grain in the ship’s timbers.
Special colour-correction techniques were employed to reveal how Endurance would look in daylight and highlighting features that would otherwise be lost in the pitch-black depths.
“This new standard of digital reconstruction opens wrecks like Endurance to the public, scientists and students around the world, offering a powerful new way to explore, study and safeguard fragile underwater heritage,” says FMHT chair Saul Pitaluga.
Future Labs, Festival of Speed’s immersive exhibition, showcases cutting-edge technology in robotics, mobility and space, with exhibits designed to allow people of all ages to get involved.
The new technologies used on Endurance22 are said to have direct applications across seabed-mapping, marine biology, offshore energy, defence and conservation, though this is likely to reduce demand within human-diving depths for the services of divers, especially in high-risk situations.
Also part of the 2025 Future Labs is “Seabed 2030: Mapping Earth’s Unseen Oceans”, which reflects the Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project to map the entire seabed over the next five years, using a combination of deepwater AUVs, multi-beam sonar, remote sensors, AI and crowd-sourced data.
The Festival of Speed is said to attract more than 200,000 visitors to Goodwood House near Chichester, West Sussex each year. Admission costs £75 for adults and children go free.
Also on Divernet: ENDURANCE SHIPWRECK SHOWS ITS ‘TRUE COLOURS’, VIVID ENDURANCE IMAGERY IN TWO-EXPEDITION DOCUMENTARY, QUEST FOR THE QUEST: LOST SHACKLETON BOAT FOUND, SHACKLETON’S ENDURANCE SHIPWRECK FOUND INTACT
