The wreck is protected under the Antarctic Treaty as a Historic Site and Monument, which means it cannot be disturbed. No artifact can be removed. The wood cannot be sampled; the ship’s wheel cannot be raised. The documentation achieved by the Endurance22 expedition — the survey, the photography, the footage — is the record. The ship will remain where it lies, at 3,008 meters, upright, legible, intact.
There is something fitting about this that goes beyond sentiment. The Weddell Sea that crushed the ship and drove it under has also, in the century since, been an extraordinarily effective preserver. The cold and the darkness and the pressure at that depth conspired against organic degradation in a way that has kept the ship as close to its 1915 condition as anything outside a museum could have managed. The sea took it and kept it and gave back an accounting of it in 2022 that is more complete than anyone had reason to expect.
## Return to Elephant Island
Elephant Island is still there, still as inaccessible and inhospitable as it was in 1916. It is not on any regular shipping route. It has no permanent human habitation. The elephant seals and penguins that kept 22 men alive in 1916 still congregate at the same sites. The rocks that the men picked up and held when they finally reached solid ground after 497 days on moving ice are still the same rocks.
A point on the western coast of the island is known as Point Wild, named for Frank Wild. It is the site where the 22 men camped from April 15 to August 30, 1916. There is a small Argentine rescue shelter there now, maintained by the Argentine Antarctic Program. There is a bust of Pardo, placed in honor of the Chilean rescuer, on the site of the landing.