The Ship Beneath the Ice: The Discovery of Shackleton’s Endurance

by Mensun Bound

“As thrilling as any tale from the heroic age of exploration. … Bound’s account is a triumph. The storytelling is piano-wire taut, the writing saturated with polar moodiness.” ― Sunday Times

The inside story of how the Endurance, Ernest Shackleton’s legendary lost ship, was found in the most hostile sea on Earth, told by the expedition’s Director of Exploration.

On November 21, 1914, after sailing more than ten thousand miles from Norway to the Antarctic Ocean, the Endurance finally succumbed to the surrounding ice. Ernest Shackleton and his crew had navigated the 144-foot, three-masted wooden vessel to Antarctica to become the first to cross the barren continent, but early season pack ice trapped them in place offshore. They watched in silence as the ship’s stern rose twenty feet in the air and disappeared into the frigid sea, then spent six harrowing months marooned on the ice in its wake. Seal meat was their only sustenance as Shackleton’s expedition to push the limits of human strength took a new form: one of survival against the odds. 

Interview with the Author

Keen On 
The Indiana Jones of the Deep: Mensun Bound on the discovery of Shackleton’s Endurance in the most hostile sea on earth
2/27/23          38 min

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