Since I am scheduled to travel to Antarctica on a ship similar to the Explorer, I was very interested in the accident that caused the loss of this ship. After reading everything I could find about the Explorer, I thought that the ship may have been lost because the crew did not know of a technique that could have saved her.
I wonder why the Explorer was not saved by the old trick of passing a sail under the ship and pulling it up against the outside of the hole in the hull. The procedure would be to tie a long rope to each corner of a large square tarp or sail, then , starting from the bow, let the sail sink below the hull and then pull it back using two ropes on each side of the ship until the sail was centered outside of the hole. Then pull the sail tightly against the hull with the ropes. This should prevent any more water from entering the ship because the water pressure would cause a tight seal against the hole.
This procedure was described in one of Patrick Obrien’s books in the Aubury / Maturin series about the British navy in the early 19th century. The Explorer must have had enough rope and tarps to do the job but apparently nobody tried - or at least I could not find it in any published accounts of the accident that I found.
