Review by Professor Fred Lockwood

There are thousands of ship wrecks around the world. Many are associated with both dramatic and tragic events. Some have been captured in paintings and photographs. Stories about a few, like the Titanic, have captured our imagination and entered folk law.

The loss of the Endurance, crushed by ice and sinking 3000 metres to the bottom of the Weddell Sea, Antarctica on 21^st November 1915, and Ernest Shackleton’s incredible journey to safety, is one of these amazing stories. If one image captures this story it is the iconic photograph of the Endurance, taken by Frank Hurley, just before the ship sank. It appears on the cover of the book.

When the Endurance sank Shackleton and his crew spent months on the ice as they drifted north – waiting for the right time to drag lifeboats towards open water. They sailed in three open boats, in conditions difficult to imagine, 346 miles to the uninhabited Elephant Island. Then, with five crew, Shackleton sailed another 800 miles to South Georgia and then trekked overland to where the expedition had started months earlier. Not a single crew member was lost.

It is noteworthy that whilst virtually all the credit for their survival is given to Shackleton it was his captain, Frank Worsley, who’s navigation saved three open boats rowing in freezing conditions. It truly was ‘a remarkable feat of nautical wayfinding.’ p 79.

Mensun Bound’s book, The Ship Beneath The Ice, recounts two expeditions, in 2019 and 2022, to find the Endurance. It’s an account based on his daily observations during the two expeditions he led, intertwined with diary entries, books and note books written by those on Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. On each day of the search Bound provides precise coordinates for the search ship so that the reader can check their progress or rather the higgledy-piggledy trace around ice bergs, impenetrable ice flows and through sheets of sea ice.

Bound adopts a relaxed, conversational, uninhibited style that belies a forensic account of both his own search and Shackleton’s ill-fated expedition. In doing so he also provides a reassessment of the myths surrounding Shackleton, not to undermine his achievements, but to acknowledge the contribution of others. The unending cold, exhaustion, lack of food and looming death faced by Endurance’s crew mirrors the challenges and frustrations that Bound’s Expedition faced and their looming failure.

The Ship Beneath The Ice also reveals the pressure Bound and the expedition were under to find the ship. To the uninitiated it would seem to be a simple process to locate the Endurance; it wasn’t. The navigator on the Endurance, Captain Worsley, had provided a location – but it was based on extremely difficult sextant readings and chronometers of unknown accuracy. If Captain Worsley’s coordinates for the sinking of the Endurance were out by a mere one and a half degrees it equated to about 20 miles; they would never find the Endurance. What’s more, Bound’s search area was dominated by massive ice flows, treacherous weather and a limited window in time. He describes the ice as ‘…gnarled, mangled, multiyear stuff that was over five metres thick and tough as teak.’ p. 172. The brutal weather included driving snow, forty knot winds and seven metre waves! They also only had weeks to complete the search before winter. It is in this context that Bound shares his own emotions; the anticipation of success and the fear of failure; emotions similar to that of Endurance’s crew.

The author includes black and white photographs taken on Shackleton’s Expedition with colour photographs taken during the search. Throughout he draws upon published books, reports and accounts, provides detailed acknowledgements and appendices, text and picture credits, a selected Shackleton bibliography as well as a comprehensive index.

There is little to criticise in Mensun Bound’s account of the search for Endurance. It is a compelling read. If I have one criticism it would be the lack of a fold out map of his search area. It would allow the reader to follow the search more clearly and appreciate the difficulties they faced in such a hostile environment.

After reading The Ship Beneath The Ice I suspect you will reconsider the contribution of marine archaeologists, like Mensun Bound, and reassess the adulation given to Shackleton and possibly other famous figures.

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Mensun Bound is a British marine archaeologist and diver. He was born in the Falkland Islands in February 1953 and during his career has discovered many of the world’s most famous wrecks. These include the WWI Imperial German Navy cruiser the SMS Scharnhorst, an Etruscan 6th-century BC shipwreck off the coast of Italy and the Hoi An Wreck, off the coast of Vietnam.

He is a trustee of the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust. The Ship Beneath The Ice is his first book.