Explorers have found one of the most famous shipwrecks in history, Ernest Shackleton's last ship Quest, off the coast of Labrador in Canada, 62 years after it went missing.

The Quest was found on Sunday evening, sitting on its keel under 390 meters of churning, frigid water. Its towering mast lies broken beside it, likely cracked off as the vessel was sucked into the depths after it struck ice on May 5, 1962.

The Norwegian-built Quest was a schooner-rigged steamship, and Shackleton bought it specifically to travel to Canada's High Arctic, said John Geiger, leader of the explorers.

Shackleton's death aboard the ship in 1922 marked the end of what historians consider the "heroic age" of Antarctic exploration. The explorer led three British expeditions to the Antarctic, and he was in the early stages of a fourth when he died of a heart attack. He was 47.

After the explorer's death, the Quest was used for Arctic research and then returned to its original intended use as a sealing vessel. It sank in 1962, after it was damaged by ice in the Labrador Sea while on a whaling trip.

It won't be brought to the surface – that would be far too expensive, Geiger added – but it will be thoroughly documented and studied. 

Shackleton never achieved his ambition to become the first person to cross Antarctica via the South Pole. In fact, he never set foot on the continent during the failed Endurance expedition, though he did visit Antarctica during earlier voyages.