Underwater footage of Captain Robert Scott's wrecked ship has emerged, after the vessel was discovered almost 70 years since it sank.

A US team said it had discovered the SS Terra Nova, a polar exploration ship that sank off the coast of Greenland in September 1943 after carrying Captain Scott and his crew to the South Pole.

The Schmidt Ocean Institute said its survey team that included researchers from the University of New Hampshire, Ifremer and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute found the wreck as it tested its echo sounders off the southern coast of Greenland.

The SS Terra Nova famously carried a British exploration team led by Robert Falcon Scott to the South Pole in 1910.

Captain Scott and his men on board SS Terra Nova in 1910

Although the men successfully reached the South Pole, they arrived to discover they had been beaten to it by Roald Amundsen's Norwegian expedition.

Captain Scott and the four members of his crew froze to death during their return journey across the Antarctic, as they attempted to travel across the Ross Ice Shelf.

The SS Terra Nova was bought by its former owners after returning to New Zealand in 1913, before it was chartered to carry supplies and sank after hitting an iceberg in 1943.