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.