Dates: 1991 -
HMS Endurance is the Royal Navy’s Antarctic ice patrol ship. She is a class 1A1 icebreaker, with pennant number A171. She was originally built in Norway in 1990 by Ulstein Hatlo for Rieber Shipping as MV Polar Circle. The Navy chartered her for eight months as HMS Polar Circle from November 21, 1991. She was bought outright and renamed HMS Endurance on October 9, 1992. Endurance provides a sovereign presence in polar waters, performs hydrographic surveys and supports the British Antarctic Survey in Antarctica.
She can move through up to 0.9 metres (3 ft) of ice at 3 knots (5.6 km/h). Her propulsion system uses a computer-controlled variable-pitch propeller and stern and bow thrusters.
HMS Endurance carries a survey motor boat named James Caird, and other boats named Nimrod and Dudley Docker which were boat names on Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance. The original open boat the James Caird was used by Shackleton to make his epic open boat voyage of 800 miles (1,300 km) from Elephant Island to South Georgia.
In 2005, Endurance was chosen to carry HM The Queen and HRH The Duke of Edinburgh at the International Fleet Review as part of the Trafalgar 200 celebrations.
During survey work in Antarctica in January 2006, the ship damaged its rudder. Receiving an offer of assistance from the Argentine Navy she sailed to Ushuaia in Argentina. The arrival of HMS Endurance was the first visit of a British warship to an Argentine port since the start of Falklands War in 1982. The visit proved controversial and provoked protests in Argentina. Endurance then entered Puerto Belgrano, Argentina’s largest naval base, for repairs and was trapped in drydock by a dockers’ strike.
In July 2007 the United Kingdom offered HMS Endurance to supply Argentine Antarctic bases after their ARA Almirante Irizar icebreaker suffered extensive damage in a fire.
