According to this Cambridge professor, the loss of the rudder wasn’t the main cause of the Endurance sinking?
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From the below linked journal:
“Conclusions
Why did Endurance sink? The popular explanation, given most often since the sinking in 1915, is that the rudder was the Achilles’ heel, and when ice tore it off, the ship was doomed. Another part of the popular narrative tells us that Endurance was an exceptionally strong wooden ship, maybe the strongest ever built. However, this narrative of Endurance as a particularly strong ship that sank due to a single point failure of the rudder is not supported by diaries of the expedition members, other written documents of the time, or structural comparison with other early polar ships. Endurance did lose its rudder, but that did not sink the ship. Endurance would have sunk even if it did not have a rudder at all. If just one simple reason must be given for the loss of Endurance, it was tearing of the keel, which broke the ship into two halves, which was fatal. Nor was the rudder the weakest part of the ship. The weakest part was the engine room area, which lacked beams and thus strength against compression from the ice. A more correct explanation would be that Endurance was crushed by ice – simply annihilated, as Shackleton (Reference Shackleton1920, p. 76) put it – without naming a single reason for the sinking.”