The Search for Shackleton's Ship.
Lessons from the maritime archaeologist who found Endurance.
“As a fifth-generation Falkland Islander, I was born of the sea, so it’s perhaps no surprise that I became a marine archaeologist specializing in shipwrecks and lost underwater worlds. I have dived on countless wrecks around the world. Each is different, each with its own unique character and story to tell about the men and women who travelled on board, about the times in which they lived and about the moments before the ship went down.”
-Mensun Bound.
The Ship Beneath The Ice contains the diaries of maritime archaeologist Mensun Bound during the 2019 and 2022 expeditions to locate the lost shipwreck of the Endurance, the symbol of Ernest Shackleton’s enduring legacy and testament to the greatest survival story ever told. Much like the diaries written by the crew of the Endurance, Bound’s words and efforts to locate the ship are the last piece of the Endurance story.
The book offers insight into life aboard a research and archaeological vessel icebreaking it’s way through the Weddell Sea pack ice to their search grid. Bound writes that the Antarctic is a critical part of the environment where climate change is upsetting the delicate balance of the region’s ecosystem creating resounding effects for the entire globe.
Bound’s endless fascination and love of everything about the Endurance is palpable. He stokes the legend but also describes what the men really faced as he compares his own experiences to theirs. Bound spent countless hours poring over the men’s diaries to determine how accurate Worsley’s coordinates were while designing their search grid.
Due to technological issues in 2019 the expedition was unsuccessful in locating the Endurance but that doesn’t mean it was a failure. In 2022 Bound and team put everything they learned into a new plan. The team located the Endurance on March 5, 2022, 100 years to the day of Shackleton’s burial on South Georgia. The Endurance was mostly intact and pristinely preserved 3000 meters below the ice. Their work in locating, recording and preserving the ship will ensure the Endurance and Shackleton’s story will endure forever.
Here’s Mensun Bound’s key lessons from searching for the Endurance:
“Born to the sea”.
Mensun Bound is a man who loves what he does. Growing up in the Falkland Islands, he was drawn to the sea and to Antarctica. He is both awed by and curious about the sea and has experienced everything from typhoons to hurricanes and everything in between. Bound writes that the Endurance always held a special allure as the one shipwreck which seemed unreachable. Bound was discussing historic wrecks over coffee with a friend when his friend suggested trying to find the Endurance. At the time, Bound thought it wasn’t possible. Fast forward ten years later when subsea technology had improved enough to give the mission a shot.
As a maritime archaeologist, Bound wants to know all the details there is to know about the ship he’s investigating. He performed extensive research into the Endurance and it’s crew, even visiting the shipyard in Norway where the ship was constructed. “A wreck can be a perfect time capsule”, Bound writes, and believed she would be well-preserved and mostly intact in the ocean depths where there is little light.
Bound’s diaries allow us to experience life aboard a scientific and archaeological research vessel, from the ups and downs of their search to sleepless nights dealing with technological failures. Their ship, the Agulhas II, battled pack ice, bergs, storms, and subzero temperatures to reach their search area and much of Bound’s account includes descriptions of how the ship dealt with these obstacles, by icebreaking and then using their equipment crane to rock the ship back and forth when it was stuck fast in the pack ice. Bound’s descriptions of environmental phenomenon, such as parhelias and flash freezing, and his encounters with seals, whales, and penguins are experiences few humans have ever had, and probably the last to do so were Shackleton’s crew.
Bound’s diaries are often poetic as he contemplates the mysteries of the Antarctic and the legend of the ship. He’s a dreamer who wants more than anything to locate the ship but he’s also a man who won’t rest until every logical avenue is tested and explored. He backs up his accounts with long-winded insights of discovering and expounding on bits and pieces of the Endurance story as his own adventure parallels their journey.
“Where are all the whales?”
The 2019 expedition’s primary mission was scientific so the first part of Bound’s book contains startling information about how Antarctica is at the “front lines” of climate change. Bound writes, “everything here is in such a delicate state of balance.”
While Shackleton saw hundreds of whales, Bound only saw a handful. So, Bound asks, where are the whales? No whales can only mean one thing - that there isn’t any food. Whales eat krill. The population of krill has been reduced by 80% due to warming sea temperatures which have risen two degrees. Krill is the main source of food for all birds, fish, and mammals in the Antarctic.
Additionally, 7 billion tons of carbon containing gases expelled into the atmosphere per year has led to ocean acidification, killing off marine life. This has also contributed to melting glaciers. The antarctic sheet is three miles thick in some places, covers 98% of the landmass and contains 61% of all the freshwater on earth. Because of climate change these glaciers are rapidly melting. If freshwater continues to empty into the ocean, the entire system will collapse.
Antartica might seem devoid of life at first but upon closer inspection it’s beautiful place which plays an important role in the global ecosystem. Life exists everywhere, even under icebergs where micro-algae grows, which feed the krill, who in turn feed the rest of the animal life.
“Nothing beats a good diary.”
Bound spent a lot of time poring over the diaries of the crew of the Endurance. He has an endless fascination for the details, stories, nuance and insights available in these diaries. Bound takes a few jabs at Shackleton’s South saying it doesn’t really get to the heart of the details, glossing over things which can only really be understood by reading the men’s diaries. Also, Bound writes, South was about building Shackleton’s own myth (and paying off his creditors). That doesn’t take away from the fact that the story is one of the greatest ever told, just that one has to go deeper if you want the full picture.
Bound wrote that before locating the wreck his own diary were just meaningless words but after discovering the ship he felt he was “writing to be read”. Bound’s own story and diary has now become part of the Endurance legacy.
“Worsley’s coordinates.”
How did they actually find the ship? The team used an AUV (autonomous underwater vehicle) called a Sabertooth to scan the ocean floor of their search grid with sonar. The Sabertooth, originally designed by the military to look for underwater mines and cables, was deployed by tether from the Agulhas II and returned data which indicated to the team that there was something large and out-of-place on the ocean floor. After pinpointing the location of the wreck, the team was able to take thousands of photographs of the site. [During the 2019 expedition their ROV imploded due to pressure and then an AUV was lost and unrecoverable, forcing them to end their search.]
As director of exploration, Bound designed the search grid for the expedition which he based off Worsley’s original coordinates for where the ship sank. Bound studied both Worsley’s competency as a navigator as well as all the possible factors which could’ve influenced Worsley’s coordinates, taking into account drift, weather, and more. Bound’s experience told him that the issue would be longitude which was notoriously harder to calculate back then. Worsley took a sextant sighting in overcast conditions three days before the ship sank and then again a day after the sinking. These sightings were taken at least 1.5 miles away at Ocean Camp where the crew were camped on an ice floe after abandoning the ship. There was also the issue of chronometers which were all subject to temperature variations as well as the violent movements of the ice.
Bound took aboard a sextant identical to the one Worsley would have used and tested his theories. A colleague used historic weather data to create a model of where sea drift might have left the ship. The ship was found 4 miles south from Worsley’s coordinates.
“A tiny error can make the difference between success and failure.”
“Shackleton never gave up, nor do we”, writes Bound. In 2019 Bound’s expedition was unsuccessful in locating the Endurance when their AUV was lost and they had no way of surveying the ocean floor for the wreck. Bound wrote only days before that “it feels like my whole life is narrowing to this moment” and that “my life will either be made or broken.” Though they were unsuccessful the team learned valuable lessons which helped them when they returned in 2022. They changed their plan, used a new, more capable AUV and pinpointed a larger, more defined search grid. They’d been tested before by the Weddell Sea so they knew what to expect. And the ice dealt them a lucky hand as they had little trouble making it through the pack to the search grid. They found a piece of the ship almost immediately but it took days to locate the rest of it.
“Everything,” Bound writes “that had gone before had been preparation for this day. Now the way was over and I had reached the end, a point of perfect convergence when everything dissolved into a single, dizzying, incandescent sunburst of pure discovery.”
“Something more than a ship”.
The expedition’s purpose in discovering the final resting place of the Endurance was to make sure the wreck is protected so that one day she might be raised. The team wasn’t interested in removing anything from the sight and only wanted to locate, study, record and interpret their findings.
To Bound and anyone who knows the story of Shackleton (me included) the Endurance is something more than a ship. It’s a legend, an epic tale of survival, in which, extraordinarily, all men survived to tell the tale. Bound writes that to most Shackleton embodies “strong leadership, determination, and courage” but that he also reminds us to grab life “by the scruff and … run with it”. In other words, Shackleton shows us “how to live.” As Shackleton said, quoting “let me taste the whole of it.”
Bound’s discovery of the ship will no doubt inspire more people to become interested in the Shackleton story, ensuring that it will live on forever. Bound also hopes tat the finding will encourage young people to become the next generation of polar environmentalists.
“I have seen things that nobody ever gets to see…but nothing…nothing compares with finding the Endurance…In a long career of surveying and excavating historic shipwrecks, I have never seen one as bold and beautiful as this.”
“The search for the Endurance has been ten years in the making. It was one of the most ambitious archaeological undertakings ever. It was also a huge international team effort that demonstrates what can be achieved when people work together. Shackleton, we like to think, would have been proud of us.”
I first read Alfred Lansing’s Endurance several years ago so reading Bound’s account of locating the ship was the next logical step. In fact, Bound’s account inspired me to re-read Endurance. The ship and it’s crew are endlessly fascinating and I never get tired of reading about it. Bound’s book fits into that story remarkably. If you enjoy stories of exploration, discovery, adventure with some science and insight into being aboard a research vessel, then you’ll enjoy Bound’s writing.
Read more about the Endurance:
Bound’s entire life was preparation for the moment of discovery. His thoughts and studies on both the crew’s diaries as well as his detailed description of the ship on the ocean floor are the ultimate conclusion of one of the greatest stories ever told.
Until next time,
Keith
