The great-great niece of legendary explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton has been granted permission to name her café boat Endurance, after the ship Ernest sailed and lost during an expedition to Antarctica.
Be it salty or fresh, no English water has moored a boat by the name Endurance for more than a 100 years, but when the registration office heard who was making the request, they thought they’d make an exception.
Anna Shackleton is a singer/café owner in the small town of Sutton Courtenay. She refurbished her own narrow boat after purchasing it six years ago from her neighbor.
“I naively took on the project, it wasn’t something I had planned my whole life for,” Shackleton said. “But our family motto is, ‘by endurance we conquer,’ so I thought if Sir Ernest can take his crews on expeditions I can do up this boat.”
Miss Shackleton, who is related to Sir Ernest on her dad’s side, has grown up hearing stories of her famous great uncle, and was understandably emotional when the news cycle erupted in March that Endurance had finally been found in the Weddell Sea.
She thought she would name her own boat ‘Endurance II.’
“I thought I would call it ‘Endurance‘ as a joke, but when I called the registration office they said it was already taken by a police vehicle,” she recounts. “They offered me ‘Endurance 14‘ but that wasn’t as funny. I said I was a Shackleton and the phone line went silent.”
“After an age, they said I could have ‘Endurance‘ without any numbers—so it was meant to be.”
Endurance of Sutton Courtenay is now a café boat called the Endurance Boat Café found quite easily on Google Maps.
READ MORE: The Endurance Ship Wreck, Lost for 100 Years is Finally Found, 10,000-ft Below the Ice
Between 1914 and 1917, Sir Shackleton led the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition when disaster struck and his ship, Endurance, became trapped in pack ice and sunk.
The crews escaped by camping on the sea ice in one of the greatest rescue operations in the history of world exploration.
Check out Anna’s video below…
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