On November 21, 1914, after sailing more than ten thousand miles from Norway to the Antarctic Ocean, the S/Y 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.

As this legendary story entered the annals of polar exploration, it inspired a new global race to find the wrecked Endurance, by all accounts “the world’s most unreachable shipwreck.” Several missions failed, thwarted, as Shackleton was, by the unpredictable Weddell Sea. Finally, a century to the day after Shackleton’s death, renowned marine archeologist Mensun Bound and an elite team of explorers discovered the lost shipwreck. Nearly ten thousand feet below the ice lay a remarkably preserved Endurance, its name still emblazoned on the ship’s stern.

In this Meet the Author event, Mensun Bound, in conversation with Timothy Jacob, will share the thrilling details of the expedition, his impressions of the pristine wreck itself, and the historical significance of this remarkable discovery.

Read a Q&A with Mensun Bound on the Newberry's blog. The Ship Beneath the Ice is available to purchase at the Newberry bookshop, and the author will sign copies after the talk.

SPEAKER
Mensun Bound, a maritime archaeologist, served as the Triton Fellow in Maritime Archaeology at Saint Peter’s College, University of Oxford, from 1992 to 2013. He was Director of Exploration for the 2019 and 2022 expeditions to locate the Endurance in the Weddell Sea of Antarctica.

Timothy Jacob is Education & Outreach Coordinator for the Endurance22 Expedition.

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