Namely News: Former Dickinson teacher part of Antarctic expedition to find sunken ship

With so much hot weather, we will chill things down with a cool discovery that has a South Bend connection.

The discovery is a sunken ship off of Antarctica. It was an expedition with scientists with icebreakers, sonar, high tech underwater cameras and a former South Bend teacher from Dickinson Intermediate Fine Arts Academy.

Tim Jacob is now director of the Traveler Program at Reach the World, which is a New York City-based non-profit. He wrote about his own frozen experience in an email. He currently lives in Chicago.

“I help travelers (think college undergrads on study abroad adventures, Fulbright Scholars conducting research or teaching English abroad, etc.) and explorers (think scientists on expeditions) share their abroad experiences or fieldwork with K-12 students in the U.S.”

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He was in the Antarctic sharing the experience with students all over the country and world. It is about building relationships and sharing adventures.

Tim grew up in Wisconsin and moved to Mishawaka in 2007 when his wife started law school at Notre Dame. He worked as a substitute teacher in School City of Mishawaka and got his master's degree/teaching license at Bethel College. He got a fulltime job teaching at Dickinson. “My passion was teaching social studies and writing. I really wanted to include my love of travel and world cultures,” he said.

Let’s get back to the sunken ship with a little history. Then back to Tim.

The ship the Endurance was missing for 106 years. It was found under 10,000 feet of water in the Weddell Sea, on the western part of Antarctica. Not on your list of places to visit this summer. Understandable.

This all goes back to 1914 and a famous explorer, Ernest Shackleton. Two ships — Endurance and Aurora — with a combined crew of 27 left England with a mission to transverse Antarctica on foot. Well, things didn’t go well. Frankly, things went really bad.

The Endurance became trapped in the ice and the crew worked to free it. That didn’t happen. The men continued to live on the ship for several months before abandoning ship in October 1915. It sank in November.

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The crew moved to an ice floe. Later they took lifeboats to uninhabited Elephant Island. Shackleton determined the only way to save the crew was to proceed to a whaling station on South Georgia Island.

Shackleton and a select group took one lifeboat for the 800-mile trip to the island. Once there, the whaling station was on the other side of the island. The lifeboat would not make the trip around. Shackleton and the men then crossed to the other side of the island on foot. That was successful. The remaining crew were picked from in August 1916.

Shackleton never realized his dream of crossing Antarctica. He achieved fame as a hero, lecturer and a leader. He died in 1922 as he was preparing to return to Antarctica. He was 47.

Moving ahead a bit. A 2019 search was unsuccessful.

The expedition that included Tim was named Endurance22 and was funded by Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust. The Endurance (1914 version) was found well preserved on the bottom. There was damage to the bow but it was upright. The wood was in remarkable shape because of the lack of creatures in that cold. The ship’s name was legible on the stern.

Back to Tim.

“Reach the World was asked by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust to put together a massive virtual exchange program that would share the story of the expedition with as many K-12 students around the world as possible," he said. "I was lucky enough to be able to represent my organization and serve as the onboard face of the expedition for our extensive student audience.”

More than 30,000 kids in 27 countries were keeping tabs on the mission.

“I was on the S.A. Agulhas II for about 45 days, from the beginning of February 2022 to mid-March 2022. The S.A. Agulhas II is a South African polar resupply and research. I flew to Cape Town and joined the ship there, and then we traveled about 3,000 miles across the southern Atlantic Ocean to the western Weddell Sea. After conducting the search for Endurance in the Weddell Sea, we stopped at South Georgia Island (where Shackleton is buried) on the way back to Cape Town,” he said.

It was a dream come true, he said.

Finding the wreck was exhilarating. When images came back from the marine robot, it was thrilling. “It was a visceral connection to the past.” After the mapping of the ship was completed in three days, there was a big party on the ice above the wreck. Dinner, a soccer game and visits from penguins checking out the excitement, he said.

Sharing the experience with the kids was just as exciting. “I'll never forget seeing K-12 students in classrooms around the world jumping for joy in their little Zoom windows on my laptop screen. Kids don't fake that kind of excitement.”

The internet can do good. "I think that's the power of virtual exchange. Any classroom with an internet connection can connect in near real-time with an international expedition to the Antarctic, and in the process, form personal connections to the ocean, Antarctic wildlife, marine archeology, ship engineering, robotics and so much more. It's a really fun way to teach and learn,” he said.

You can reach Kathy at kfborlik@yahoo.com.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Sunken Endurance found off Antarctica; former area teacher part of crew