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Finding the Endurance: A Guest Post from Mensun Bound, Author of The Ship Beneath the Ice
Ships in 1-2 days.
This is a gripping tale of true-life mystery and true-life action and adventure by the marine archaeologist who headed two Antarctic expeditions leading to the discovery of the 1915 wreck of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance. For the legions of readers captivated by stories of exploration and disaster, Mensun Bound’s The Ship Beneath the Ice will be an enthralling delight. Keep reading for a guest post from Mensun Bound, Director of Exploration, about the shipwreck and its discovery.
It all went horribly wrong. Their goal was to cross Antarctica from one side to the other via the Pole, but they never even set foot on land. Their ship, the Endurance, became trapped in the Weddell Sea pack and, over the next nine months, was slowly crushed. On November 21st, 1915, they watched from the ice as the ship’s stern rose and then disappeared. The man behind the expedition was Sir Ernest Shackleton.
What followed was one of the greatest escapes in history. For five months, they lived in tents on the Weddell Sea pack ice. When the ice crumbled, they set off in open boats for Elephant Island, arriving six days later, barely alive. Shackleton knew that if they stayed, they would perish, so he took five men and the best boat and set off across one of the most dangerous seas in the world to seek help from the whaling stations on South Georgia. Against all odds, he made it and on August 30th, 1916, all 28 men were rescued.
Finding the Endurance beneath the pack ice, three thousand meters down, in the worst part of the worst sea in the world, was thought to be impossible. But in August 2012, the search for the Endurance began in a coffee shop on Old Brompton Road in London’s South Kensington. It took ten years, two missions, and a team of specialists, but on March 5th, 2022, they found her. The ship was upright and largely intact, with even her paintwork and fastenings visible. The name “Endurance” was written across the stern in large letters and the ship’s wheel was in almost perfect condition.
As a maritime archaeologist, I have never seen a wreck as well-preserved and beautiful as the Endurance. The highlight for me was seeing the portholes to Shackleton’s cabin. As an archaeologist, you’re supposed to maintain a certain level of professional detachment, but with the Endurance, I was just as excited as everyone else on board. In my book, The Ship beneath the Ice, I described the ups and downs of the expedition, but above all, I tried to convey the excitement we felt when we became the first people in over a hundred years to see Shackleton’s Endurance.