This is Sir Ernest Shackleton’s expedition ship, the Endurance, as you’ve never seen it before – in Lego form. Far from being a small, simple Lego kit for kids, this is a 3,011 piece kit designed specifically for adults.
Launched in 1912, Endurance was designed as a state-of-the-art polar exploration vessel. It was originally named Polaris, and was built in Norway by the master shipbuilder Christian Jacobsen. At 144 feet long and 25 feet wide, Polaris was a three-masted schooner barque built with extraordinary strength specifically for use in polar expeditions.
The kit is made up of 3,011 pieces and when completed it measures in at 47 cm (18.5 in) high, 80 cm (31.5 in) long, and 24 cm (9.5 in) wide.
Polaris’ hull was reinforced with thick oak and greenheart timbers – it was designed to withstand crushing impacts from sea ice. Despite the heavy duty construction, Polaris was not built for prolonged entrapment in ice, this would be a vulnerability that would later seal her fate as the Endurance.
The Polaris would be sold before it could ever be used by its original owners, as one of its commissioners (Adrien de Gerlache) went bankrupt. This would be how Sir Ernest Shackleton was able to buy the ship in essentially brand-new condition, and to buy it for less than the cost of building it new.
In 1914, Shackleton embarked on the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, aiming to cross Antarctica from coast to coast via the South Pole. Shackleton equipped the Endurance as the expedition’s lifeline, carrying him and his crew of 27 men into uncharted territory. The journey represented one of the last great adventures of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, and it would become one of the greatest stories of survival in modern human history.
Departing from South Georgia Island in December 1914, Endurance set course for the Weddell Sea. However, just weeks into the journey, the ship became trapped in dense pack ice.
For ten months, Endurance drifted with the pack ice, the hull crushed gradually by the immense pressure of the ice. Shackleton and his crew lived aboard, waiting for a chance to escape. On October 27, 1915, the ice inflicted irreparable damage, forcing the crew to abandon ship. Over the following weeks, the vessel sank, disappearing beneath the frozen waters of the Weddell Sea.
Despite the loss of their ship, Shackleton’s leadership and the crew’s ability to endure a seemingly endless series of setbacks would ultimately ensure their survival. They endured months of grueling conditions, finally escaping to safety through a journey across ice floes and open seas to the South Georgia whaling stations – a distance of 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) in a lifeboat that was just 22.5 foot (6.9 meters) long across some of the most treacherous seas on Earth.
The Lego Icons Endurance
This Lego Icons Endurance set was developed to celebrate what is arguably the most famous Antarctic expedition in history, despite the fact that it was technically a failure in that it didn’t achieve the goal of crossing the great southern continent.
The kit is made up of 3,011 pieces and when completed it measures in at 47 cm (18.5 in) high, 80 cm (31.5 in) long, and 24 cm (9.5 in) wide. It’s designed specifically for adults who are 18+, however there are many younger teens who would be able to tackle the kit solo despite this age limit.
The kit comes with a stand, allowing the ship to be displayed on a desk, mantle, shelf, or table as a centerpiece and a conversation piece.
The ship’s wheel turns the rudder, and you can lift the deck sections to access the port and starboard cabins and the ship’s steam engine. The kit comes with a stand, allowing the ship to be displayed on a desk, mantle, shelf, or table as a centerpiece and a conversation piece.
The kit is currently available from Lego directly, though numbers are limited and some customers are apparently needing to backorder them. If you’d like to read more about it or order one yourself you can visit the store here.
Images courtesy of Lego®
Articles that Ben has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
