An epic feat of Endurance under the ice
Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition of 1914, which began just as the First World War was breaking out, is celebrated as an epic of heroism and survival. Shackleton and his crew were forced to abandon their magnificent ship, the aptly named Endurance, after she became trapped in the pack ice and sank, but incredibly every one of them lived to tell the tale. The fate of Shackleton, who died of a heart attack in South Georgia in 1922, aged 47, is well known, but what of the ship with which his name is inextricably linked?
One man determined to find out was Mensun Bound, a marine archaeologist who has spent his life locating undersea wrecks and who for years had dreamt of discovering the last resting place of Endurance.
His chance finally came in
2019, when he was appointed director of exploration on an international scientific expedition charged with following in Shackleton’s footsteps and finding the wreck.
Bound has a natural flair for storytelling and his narrative cracks along with the pace of a well-crafted thriller. The challenges were immense. Although they were housed in a state-of-the-art vessel equipped with tools Shackleton could never have dreamt of, they still had to operate in what the great man himself had labelled ‘the worst portion of the worst sea on Earth’. No charts were available and, as Bound remarks, we know more about the rings of Saturn than we do about our own Southern Ocean.
Most of the wrecks he has worked on in his career were less than 165ft from the surface, but the Endurance was estimated to be lying at a depth of 10,000ft. Only unmanned submersibles can operate at that level, and the process of detecting wreckage using sonar equipment is like searching, as Bound puts it, ‘with bandaged eyes’. So why go to the trouble?
It’s a question Bound answers with the passion of the true believer, and it’s hard to resist being swept up in his enthusiasm. The purpose of the voyage, he explains, was to locate, study, record, interpret, share and protect. Shackleton’s own credo expressed this perfectly when he spoke of ‘the creation of new bricks for the great wall of knowledge’. Sadly, the scientific data recorded during the expedition was mostly gloomy, attesting to the increasing acidification of the oceans and the destruction wrought by climate change.
It took two attempts to find Endurance, and the dedication and perseverance shown by Bound and his colleagues are a worthy testament to the man who inspired them. It’s a captivating and engrossing story, told with a clear eye for the telling detail.
The book closes with the members of the expedition paying their respects at Shackleton’s grave on South Georgia. Bound’s heartfelt eulogy sums up precisely why we should still revere him:
‘He was about man’s inherent urge to be always striving for the horizon, reaching for the next thing, pushing to expand his boundaries.’ I can’t think of a finer tribute than that.