Royal Navy icebreaker HMS Endurance has left Rothera Island in the Antarctic and will continue with her planned programme following her grounding at the weekend.

The Red Plum’s box keel was scraped, but her hull was undamaged by the uncharted pinnacle of rock which she encountered around ten miles off the coast of the Antarctic peninsula.

Now that divers have had a good look at the damage, it is understood that the ship will complete the rest of her deployment and return to Portsmouth in the early summer as planned, allowing repair work to be carried out during her normal maintenance period before she deploys south again.

The hull is strengthened and protected as the ship has ice-breaking capabilities – she can smash through up to 1.5 metres thick first-year ice.

One of her more pressing tasks will be to return to the area where she struck the pinnacle – in her role as a survey ship she will ensure that that particular hazard is marked on charts in the future, and also check that no other similar formations exist in the vicinity.