The Ship Beneath the Ice

December 19, 2022
The final chapter of one of the age of Antarctic exploration’s most famous sagas is told in marine archaeologist Bound’s page-turning debut. Drawing on diary entries from Ernest Shackleton’s ill-fated 1914 expedition to the South Pole aboard the Endurance, Bound explains how the ship became trapped in sea ice, splintered, mand sank. Though the entire crew survived—thanks to Shackleton’s famous 800-mile lifeboat journey to South Georgia Island to seek help—the Endurance was never recovered. In 2019, Bound and his own crew traveled to Antarctica in an attempt to locate the wreckage, using coordinates pieced together from small bits of information in the journals of Shackleton and his men. After ramming through miles of ice pack as thick as six meters in some places, the expedition launched a remote submersible, only to have it go “rogue” (it has yet to be found). Three years later, Bound returned to the site with many of the same crew members; on Mar. 5, 2022, their deep-diving sonar submersible spotted the remarkably well-preserved Endurance on the floor of the Weddell Sea (“A moment of absolute perfection,” Bound writes). The shifts between past and present are skillfully handled, and Bound vividly conveys the anxiety and anticipation of archaeological expeditions. Armchair adventurers will be swept up in the thrill of discovery.

January 1, 2023
A fifth-generation Falkland Islander chronicles the "journey to find the greatest shipwreck of them all." Written in a brisk diary format, Bound's exciting, dramatic book is very much a personal one. The author served as director of exploration on the two attempts to find Endurance, the famous vessel captained by Ernest Shackleton that sunk in Antarctica in 1915. The wreck rests 3,000 meters below the surface. After years of preparation, on Jan. 1, 2019, Bound and his team of 51 scientists set off for the east coast of the Antarctic Peninsula on an icebreaker, with its crew of 44, to find the ship. As Bound shows, the trek was "a bold new step forward in subsea technology and, I thought, probably a challenge too far." Maneuvering their way around shrinking icebergs, the author noted with sadness the small number of penguins, seals, and whales they encountered. Indeed, "the Antarctic Peninsula is the canary in the coal mine for climate change." While testing their autonomous underwater vehicle, they almost lost it under the ice. After days of research, they set off for the Endurance. They faced numerous technical complications that required new parts to be flown in, but they finally reached the site and began exploring with the AUV. Unfortunately, the ship got stuck in the ice, the weather deteriorated, and they were forced to give up. However, on Feb. 1, 2022, they launched another expedition, this time featuring a Sabertooth diving vessel with a tilt camera. Late in the month, they arrived at the site area and began search runs. On March 5, Sabertooth found something 4 meters above the seabed. The author enthusiastically recalls when the team first saw the shape of the hull and then the bow. Then a shout: "That's it. It's the Endurance!" Remarkably, it was in a semi-intact state. Throughout, Bound nicely interweaves the fascinating history of Shackleton's expedition into his own. An entertaining true-life adventure tale perfect for naval aficionados and armchair expeditioners.

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Starred review from January 1, 2023
Readers might remember the news reports from early in 2022, when explorer Ernest Shackleton's ship the Endurance, which sank in the Antarctic in 1915, was located and photographed. It was a moment of great historical significance, the resolution to the century-old mystery and the long-awaited conclusion to the story of Shackleton's ill-fated expedition. But those reports barely scratched the surface of this utterly captivating story. In his engrossing account, Bound, the maritime archaeologist who led the expedition that found the wreck, alternates between past and present, reminding readers of what happened in 1915 and also taking them along on his modern-day expedition to find the Endurance. Bound is a terrific storyteller; he writes with a sense of showmanship, instilling the story of the Endurance's discovery with drama, suspense, and pulse-racing thrills. Like Robert Ballard's The Discovery of the Titanic, Clive Cussler and Craig Dirgo's The Sea Hunters, and Robert Kurson's Shadow Divers, the book really captures the adventure of hunting for undersea wrecks. For anyone with even a passing interest in the marvels of undersea archaeology, this is simply wonderful.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.