Photo: supplied
In March this year, Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance was found 3000 metres under the icy Weddell Sea - 107 years after it sank.
British maritime archaeologist Mensun Bound, along with a large team of scientists, meteorologists, engineers and dive specialists found the ship still in remarkably good condition.
For Bound, the search for Shackleton's ship was the culmination of a lifetime fascination with the explorer and his Antarctic expeditions.
He has written about the discovery in a new book, The Ship Beneath The Ice.
There had been a previous attempt to find Endurance in 2019, he tells Kathryn Ryan.
Based on navigator Frank Worsley's original coordinates, Bound identified a search area of over 100 square nautical miles.
They had a couple of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) with which to scour the seabed looking for signs of the wreck.
"They look a bit like torpedoes, they carry side scan, sonar and multibeam and things like that, remote sensing instruments, which will detect any anomalies on the seabed.
“And we program that to follow a prescribed set of pathways along the seabed. In fact, we divided the search box up into 11 lines.”
The search was proceeding well, he says.
“We had in fact covered over half the search box. Now what happens is when we're searching, the vehicle is entirely autonomous, we're not in contact with it at all. But every six or eight hours, we meet up, we rendezvous with it, for what we call a handshake, by which I mean the vehicle goes into a kind of holding position a bit like aircraft over airports.
“And during that time, we interrogate its various payload systems, and then we issue it with fresh navigation instructions. And off it goes again for another six or eight hours, during which time we're not in contact with it.”
However an AUV failed to turn up for one of its “handshakes”.
“And in that moment, everything just came crashing down around us,” Bound says.
They attempted to locate the missing AUV, but conditions were deteriorating.
"The ice was getting more and more aggressive, winter was upon us, And we did get stuck like The Endurance in the ice and things were getting quite dangerous, and we had to give up in the end.”
The bitterly disappointed expedition team headed back to England, Bound expecting this to be his last hurrah.
“It wasn't my best moment, we had to go back to England, me especially with my tail between my legs. And I had to report back to the head office in London. We’d just lost a multimillion pound AUV and all the money and resource that went into an expedition like that.
"And I don't know what I expected, but I went in there and I sort of had visions of them handing me a pistol with a single bullet in the spout of sending me off the library to do the honourable thing.”
But in fact the team was given a second chance by The Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust which was funding the operation.
Second time around they learned from previous mistakes, he says.
"We learned that an AUV was not a really not an ideal vehicle to be deploying beneath the ice.
"And one of our number, a man called Nico Vincent, he came up with the idea of using a new vehicle, which was being worked upon by Saab in Sweden.”
Called the Sabre Tooth, the vehicle kept in touch with the ship via a 3km long fibre cable.
Not only did this mean they couldn’t lose the vehicle, but it gave them continuous real time data.
"If a point of interest, or an anomaly appeared on the screen, we'd spot it straight away. And then we'd simply switch the vehicle from search mode into inspection mode. And we could simply just toddle over and verify whether it was The Endurance or some dropped stones or a dead whale or something of that nature.”
On 5 March he and expedition leader John Shears decided to take advantage of a break in the weather to stretch their legs, he says.
"On the morning of 5 March I opened my curtains and there beside the ship, off to starboard, was this amazing iceberg which was locked into the same flow into which we were locked.
"It was about a kilometre and a half away and we decided we would get up and walk to the iceberg, which we did, it would have been about 3.30 in the afternoon, and off we set.”
When they returned they were summoned to the bridge.
“A cadet came over to me as I was taking off my polar gear and he said Captain Knowledge Bengu asked me to convey his compliments, and he requests your presence on the bridge immediately.
"And just as he said that the Tannoy system on the ship crackled to life ‘Bound and Shears to the bridge immediately'."
He made his way to the bridge with some trepidation, he says.
“As we tumbled out onto the bridge, Nico Vincent was already there. And he strolled up to me, and he thrust his iPhone into my face. And there on the screen was the image of this amazing wreck.
"And he said, ‘gents let me introduce you to Endurance’ and it was this perfect, high frequency image of the Endurance as seen from above, it was absolutely perfectly defined.”
The ship’s ice skipper, Freddie Ligthelm, then approached Bound.
“He came straight striding towards me in his whites and his epaulettes with his hand outstretched and I met it with mine and he said to me, Mensun how do you feel?
“And I said ‘Freddie I feel a breath of Shackleton himself on the back of my neck’ it really was the most wonderful feeling ever, there’s nothing comparable to it in my life and I'm sure I never feel anything like that again.”
Bound has seen some impressive sights under water, he says
“I've seen things on the seabed which other people just do not get to see, including casks of treasure spilling over onto the seabed, skulls with their mouth agape sort of grinning at you from out of the sediment, but nothing, nothing beats The Endurance.”
The wreck itself was in excellent condition, he says, helped by frigid temperatures and an absence of wood-eating ocean worms.
“You could see the paintwork she was absolutely almost clean of weed, you could count the fastenings in her timber. And I'll never forget my first view of it was from the stern, we approached the stern and the first thing I saw was the rudder.
"And it was when the rudder was torn off the ship by the ice, It was then that the water got in and she began to sink.
"It [the rudder] was sitting there, just laying there in the sediment beneath the stern, just so innocently, it was just laying there right beside the stern post and in the stern posts, I could see the torn wood, where the rudder had been ripped away by the ice, it was incredible.”
Further investigation revealed two portholes.
“These were the portholes to Shackleton's cabin and that moment, you know, the hairs on the back of your neck are absolutely just standing on their head. It was just unbelievable.”
The Endurance will remain where it has lain for 107 years, he says.
“The wreck is now a protected monument site. So, I doubt very much any of us will be revisiting it.”
