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For other ships with the same name, see HMS Endurance.
HMS Endurance is the Royal Navy's Antarctic ice patrol ship. She is a class 1A1 icebreaker, with pennant number A171. She was originally built in Norway in 1990 by Ulstein Hatlo for Rieber Shipping as MV Polar Circle. The Navy chartered her in 1991 for eight months as HMS Polar Circle from November 21, 1991. She was bought outright in 1992 and renamed HMS Endurance on October 9 of that year. She provides a sovereign presence in the Antarctica area, performs hydrographic surveys and supports the British Antarctic Survey.
She can move through up to 0.9 metres of ice at 3 knots. Her propulsion system uses a computer-controlled variable pitch propellor and stern and bow thrusters.
HMS Endurance carries a survey motor boat named James Caird, and other boats named Nimrod and Dudley Docker which were also boat names on Sir Ernest Shackleton's Endurance. The original open boat the James Caird was used by Shackleton to make his epic open boat voyage of 800 miles (1,300 km) from Elephant Island, to South Georgia.
In January 2006 during survey work in Antarctica, the ship damaged its rudder and sailed to Ushuaia in Argentina, after receiving an offer of assistance from the Argentine Navy. The arrival of HMS Endurance was the first visit of a British warship to an Argentine port since the start of Falklands War in 1982. The visit to Ushuaia proved controversial and provoked protests in Argentina. Endurance then entered Puerto Belgrano, Argentina's largest naval base, for repairs and been in drydock 25 days .
Commissioned ships of the Royal Navy 