Set review: 10335 The Endurance from LEGO® Icons

Black Friday falls this week, and the big release on the day is LEGO® Icons set 10335 The Endurance; a recreation of the ship used by Ernest Shackleton in his attempted expedition to cross the Antarctic. 

After I examined what the LEGO Endurance is made of last week, let us now look at how she is built. In addition to that, I have a short historical overview about Ernest Shackleton and the real Endurance.

Products in this article were gifted by The LEGO Group; the author's opinions are their own.
This article contains affiliate links to LEGO.com; we may get a small commission if you purchase.

10335 The Endurance

• Release date: 29 November 2024
• Pieces: 3011

Price: 

• US$ 269.99 on LEGO.com US
• CA$ 349.99 on LEGO.com Canada
• GB£ 229.99 on LEGO.com UK
• AU$ 399.99 on LEGO.com Australia
• NZ$ 449.99 on LEGO.com New Zealand
• DE€ 269,99 on LEGO.com Deutschland
• NL€ 269,99 on LEGO.com Nederland
• FR€ 269,99 on LEGO.com France
• PLN 1149.99 on LEGO.com Polska
• NOK 3199,90 on LEGO.com Norge
• DKK 2099.95 on LEGO.com Danmark

Other countries click here

 

 Gift with Purchase: 40729 Shackleton's Lifeboat

• Release date: 29 November to 2 December 2024
• Availability: Gift with purchase for all shoppers who purchase 10335 The Endurance set on LEGO.com while stocks last.
• Pieces: 232
• Measurements: over 6 in. (15 cm) high, 7 in. (17 cm) long and 2.5 in. (6 cm) wide

View GwP 40729 on LEGO.com

 

The build

You start the construction process with the 1 module-wide keel of the Endurance, and after the first few steps of the keel laying you assemble a little tan stand to help keep the model in place while building. This support isn't necessary for the first bag of construction, but the more the ship grows and larger panels are attached to the hull, the more it tilts to one side or another while building.

 
The following pictures were mostly taken without the helper stand, because it looks better that way.

The bags 1 to 6 build up the bow of the ship and, oddly with the last parts of bag 6, the brown display stand. 

The bags 7 to 12 are the construction of the hull, which does not feature any especially interesting points. 

Bags 13 to 20 are the construction of the stern, and this section offers a lot of cool features and details.

On all these three sections, you start with the one-module keel line and attach panels to each side, to build up bow, hull and stern. This can be difficult at some points. Because of the largely hollow and fragile nature of the narrow keel construction, the panels are either not mounted right, or in my case, the central keel construction broke off. 

The LEGO Endurance set is, for most of its assembly process, divided into those 3 sections that will connect now to one main hull. 

Below left, two LEGO Technic axles are inserted vertically through modified 2x3 plates with hole to bring the bow and hull together. Below right, they are pushed down to lock the sections in position, which are further secured by two black 1x8 tiles at the sides. 

The same approach is used (above left) to fix the hull and stern, with two reddish brown 1x12 plates (above right) bridging the join. Once done, the three segments can’t be easily separated without ripping half the ship down.

I like the use of the tan masonry profile bricks to create the decking of the the ship. While on most sets (and probably MOCs too) they are more commonly used with the "front" face that shows brickwork, the "back" face, that just has horizontal lines, is used less often. To see it in this set as wood paneling was a great touch.

Bags 21 to 23 create the upper deck, cabin cover-ups, the stack chimney, lifelines and additional details such as the skylights and standard compass. Also, you get to assemble the first sections of the mizzen-, the main- and the fore-mast.

Bag 24 and 25 bring the lifeboats to the Endurance. There is a pair of slightly smaller and a pair of slightly bigger ones – the difference between them is only 1 module in length, so barely noticeable.

By the way, the James Caird, our hero’s lifeboat, was located on the starboard aft davit. This is not included in the set: it is the Gift with Purchase (GwP) for those buying the LEGO Endurance set upon launch, and is at minifigure scale, unlike the LEGO Endurance. I'll be reviewing it for you later this week.

Bags 26 and 27 are the remaining mast sections and yards. Also here, we finally get to use the white recoloured barrel (6511452) for the crow's nest on the main mast.

Bag 28 is the last one and here we finally get to give the ship her rigging and sails, as well as some finishing touches like the "Red Ensign" flag and the Endurance name/ dedication plaque for the display stand.

The rigging of the three masts is a bit tricky, due to the bendy nature of the parts which, as you may recall from part 1, came already quite bent out of the box. To get them looking as flawless as possible you need a good portion of patience. 

Luckily, the tension of both the rigging from the bottom of the deck to the middle of the mast, as well as the counterbalancing tension between each pairs of rigging, helps a bit here.

Applying the sails is for the most part easy and straightforward, except for the front triangular sails which have to be threaded on a long string that goes from bowsprit to mizzenmast. These two strings adding a lot to the appearance of the ship, but they tend to put some pressure on the three masts so that they bend a bit forward. This could be caused by the strings alone, possibly supported by the construction of the mast using stacked Technic connectors (which in my experience also bend by themselves sometimes).

Building the stern was to me the most interesting part of this set because it includes a lot of detail, such as the cabins of Shackleton and his science officer. I particularly like the use of the light nougat wedge tile in Shackleton’s cabin as a bedsheet. Another small but remarkable detail is the use of medium nougat masonry profile bricks to achieve the decking in contrast to the use of the tan ones on the remaining ship. I interpret it as a differentiation between the weather-torn ship, always encountering the harsh tides, while the cabin is a closed space, safe from the forces of nature.

There is actual working steering on the helm included. It is not a spectacular mechanism to be honest, simply a Technic axle and 2 gears. As the only real “play feature” for what is a recreation of a display model rather than an actual floating vessel, it is a nice to have but not a must have.

Also, the steam engine is housed here which, according to the instructions, “can be removed from the engine room and put on display”. While true, I find displaying the engine does not add to the value of the model, considering that the stand doesn’t have a dedicated space for it – so it just sits next to the ship quite randomly.

 

One important note about the attachment of the white flexible hose beneath the Endurance print – it has to sit exactly with the clip end, not the plate end, so that it bends perfectly horizontally from one side to the other without also bending downwards.

As mentioned in my parts review, the sails are the highlight of this set, not only from a MOC-builder's perspective, where I see many opportunities to use these ten sails with its eight different shapes, but also aesthetically. If you compare the ship after building the mast and then attaching the sails, it is such a striking difference. The mast-only ship already looks good and, in most cases, MOC-builders do tend to depict a ship with reefed sails, but this is mostly due to the lack of a proper full sail alternative.

But with hoisted sails the Endurance (and subsequently every ship using these elements) just looks whole and perfect. I can’t emphasise enough how much the sails add to this set!

One of the few aspects that I am not too fond about the LEGO Endurance model is the construction of the lower hull. The mix of wedges and slopes achieves a result, but seems rather unbalanced. 

The best of example this is the front cover of the building instruction booklet.

Sure, achieving the shapes of the bow contours is difficult, so they did a quite decent job, but maybe there would have been different options that are equally sturdy that achieve a smoother look?

The stern looks more balanced to me than the bow, but that may be caused by its longer, not-so-steep shape that also features a rotor and the rudder.

 
Happily the hull of the Endurance is mostly black, and the slope stepping is pointing downwards, so for most of the viewing angles or looking from a distance, it is not too obvious.

  

Another small nitpicky point is that the kennels that sit on top of the cabin, going from the middle of the ship to the stern, should be in one straight line on each side. On the LEGO model they step one module inward towards the rear part of the ship. It would have been easy to keep the line.

It is, for sure, no dealbreaker for the set as a model. But if you know the reference material, once you notice it you can't unsee it, and personally it bugs me a bit.

Another noteworthy point, even though it doesn’t relate to the set itself, is the building instructions layout. It is often difficult to read due to the fold of the booklet, an issue that I encountered in many sets over the past months or even years.

Conclusion

The Endurance is a wonderful LEGO set, and a faithful tribute to its real-life counterpart. To me it is the highlight set of 2024, and rightfully earns the spot of being sold on the premium Black Friday shopping day.

While it certainly has its flaws for me, like the sloping on the bow or the small inconsistency on the kennels on top of the upper deck, it is otherwise a perfect model. Details such as the cabin interiors, parts usage like the skeleton legs for the lifelines or the white barrel as crows nest, the colour blocking and the overall presentation give this set much gravitas. The sails are such a delight and offer so many opportunities for model builders – I already have tons of ideas of what I would build with them, and am hoping these will find their way to Pick a Brick next year.

To sum it up: while I never have built a classic wooden model of a ship, I imagine that it feels exactly like building the LEGO Endurance. 

I can recommend this set to everyone who is interested in ships, or history, or indeed the history of ships. For its retail price it offers a great deal as a set, bringing much joy while building, while gazing at it on display, or even just for the parts that make this set.

History of the Endurance 

Originally launched 1912 in Norway under the name Polaris, Ernest Shackleton bought the ship two years later for his Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition between 1914 and 1917. He renamed the ship to Endurance – most likely after his family’s motto “By endurance we conquer” (lat. Fortitudine vincimus). The only visible remnant of the Polaris is the star on the stern of the ship.

 

At this point I want to make a short excuse to one of our two heroes, Ernest Shackleton and Frank Hurley, as the latter will be featured in our third and last article rather than here.

By Frank Hurley - State Library of New South Wales ON 26 -12, Public Domain, Link

Ernest Henry Shackleton was born on 15 February 1874 of Anglo-Irish descent. He participated in several polar expeditions, of which he led three – his journey on the Endurance was the second one. His first experience in polar regions was under the command of Robert Falcon Scott's Discovery Expedition of 1901–1904.

The first arctic endeavour he led was the Nimrod Expedition between 1907–1909, in which he discovered the approximate location of the South Magnetic Pole. He returned home as a hero and received several honours, one of them a knighthood, becoming Sir Ernest.

After Roald Amundsen's decided the contest of South Pole for himself in the race with Scott in December 1911, Shackleton’s goal was the crossing of Antarctica from one side to another. This was to become the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914–1917 of the Endurance. This expedition was short-lived, and ended in disaster, as I will detail in a moment.

By State Library of New South Wales collection - https://www.flickr.com/photos/statelibraryofnsw/3534625867/, No restrictions, Link

After the failure of the Endurance mission, he returned for a third (and last) time to the Antarctic in 1921. He died on 5 January, suffering a fatal heart attack. By the will of this wife, he was buried on 5 March 1922 Grytviken cemetery, South Georgia. He died with heavy debt.

 
After his death he became largely forgotten for many decades, due to the stellar reputation of his rival Scott. Much later in the 20th century, Shackleton became a role model for leadership in extreme situations.

The Endurance and her journey

Originally built for tourist and hunting parties, the purpose of the Polaris was luxurious accommodation. She was constructed to withhold the polar conditions as a very sturdy three-masted barquentine with a supporting steam engine. She never fulfilled her original purpose, because one of the owners became bankrupt and sold the ship to Shackleton, who relocated her in Spring 1914 from Norway to London and started his preparations for the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, while the renamed Endurance got refitted.

Endurance started her journey on 1 August 1914 (the day when Germany declared war on Russia) with a crew of 28 men, 69 sled dogs and a cat called Mrs. Chippy. Winston Churchill gave orders that Shackleton should proceed with his expedition, despite the outbreak of World War I.

 
Her maiden voyage started in Plymouth on 8 August with a first leg to Buenos Aires, Argentina. In the second leg, she sailed from Buenos Aires to Grytviken, South Georgia. Finally, she left there on 5 December heading to the Weddell Sea and the final destination.

The initial plan was to arrive at Vahsel Bay and go from there by foot and with dog sleds over the ice to the other side of Antarctica – but they didn’t even come close to this goal.

Only two days after its departure, the Endurance encountered polar pack ice and was slowed down immediately. In the following weeks, she progressed slowly through the ice. In the process she exploited her boilers and was destined to drift with the ice southwards, until she became released by it naturally. While she got in the approximate range of Vahsel Bay in February 1915, the ice was not sustainable to travel over it with materials and supplies to start the ground operation. 

The Endurance was trapped all year in the polar ice, which slowly pushed and pinched her hull. Since they became immobilised in the pack ice, the crew of Shackleton had prepared for the worst-case scenario by losing personal belongings, saving weight on the ship wherever possible. On 27 October 1915, another wave of pressure lifted the stern of the ship, ripping of the rudder and opening the ship to freezing water.

On 21 November 1915, another blow struck the wrecked Endurance and within moments, the moving ice released the ship momentarily, only to allow the sea to drag her into the dark depths. The surrounding ice quickly closed the spot where the Endurance had been moments before, leaving no visible sign of her existence.

On 5 March 2022, exactly 100 years after the funeral of Sir Ernest, the wreck of the Endurance was discovered in the Weddell Sea by the search team Endurance22. In an excellent state of preservation and lying 3,008 metres deep, she is a historic site and monument protected under the Antarctic Treaty System.

In a miraculous turn of events, Shackleton and all 27 men under his command survived their gruesome arctic odyssey. One guarantor of their survival was Shackleton’s leadership under extreme circumstances… and James Caird: one of the lifeboats of the sunken Endurance and protagonist of our next and final article discussing the Gift with Purchase available with this fine LEGO set.

READ MORE: Caz Mockett's MOCs using recently introduced LEGO parts

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