Name RRS Shackleton Yard number 41 Completed February 1955 Draft 4.66 m Builder Sweden | Namesake Ernest Shackleton Launched 11 November 1954 Length 66 m Endurance 28 days 0 hours | |
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Operator Falkland Islands Dependency Survey / British Antarctic Survey / NERC | ||
RRS Shackleton was a Royal Research Ship operating in the Antarctic from 1955 to 1992. She was then in service as a seismic survey vessel, Sea Profiler, until being scrapped in 2011.
History
Built in 1954 by Solvesborgs Varv A/B at Sölvesborg, Sweden, she was launched as MV Arendal (III) for work in the Baltic. She was purchased in 1955 by the Falkland Islands Dependency Survey (British Antarctic Survey from 1962). After conversion to carry more passengers, she was renamed Shackleton and sailed to the Antarctic for the 1955/56 season.
In 1957, Shackleton struck an iceberg off the South Orkney Islands and was nearly lost. Temporary repairs allowed the Shackleton to reach South Georgia, more than 600 miles from the accident, while all unnecessary passengers and crew were rescued by HMS Protector.
At Deception Island in 1966 the Shackleton met and provisioned Bill Tilman's SV Mischief, the first private expedition to visit a British Antarctic base. Shackleton joined the rescue of Deception Island base members when the volcano erupted in December 1967 and again in February 1969.
In 1968 Shackleton became RRS Shackleton and was rebuilt in 1971. On 4 February 1976, while taking part of a British economic survey of the Falkland Islands led by Lord Shackleton (son of the Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton), RRS Shackleton was fired on by the Argentine destroyer ARA Almirante Storni in a precursor to the Falklands Conflict.
After the British Antarctic Survey, she served the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) as an oceanographic research ship and visited Antarctica on five further occasions, before being withdrawn from NERC service in 1983.
Shackleton was renamed Geotek Beta in 1983, and Profiler in 1984. She was ‘retired’ from the South Atlantic in 1992 and reconfigured as a soils and high resolution seismic survey vessel, operated by Gardline Shipping Limited. They renamed her Sea Profiler in 1992. She was scrapped in New Holland on the Humber estuary in 2011.