Shackleton's Endurance: your questions answered

Why is the Endurance story so famous?

Shackleton’s goal was to cross Antarctica from coast to coast by way of the Pole. But when their ship ‘Endurance’ was crushed by the ice of the Weddell Sea, it became something else: the greatest story of survival ever. There were twenty-eight men on the ice at the centre of the most hostile sea on earth. Nobody knew where they were and, even if they did, nobody could have saved them. The nearest centre of civilization was Port Stanley in the Falklands. It all came down to three things: food, shelter and the will to live. That they all got out of that hell-hole alive, came down to the courage, determination and leadership of one man – Sir Ernest Shackleton.

‘The story of Shackleton’s Endurance is one of the most extraordinary in the history of exploration. ’

Sir Michael Palin

Why did the Endurance sink?

In January 1915, the Endurance (the ship that has become the symbol of the whole Shackleton saga) found herself locked in pack ice from which she could not escape. The team survived the long, dark Antarctic winter of 1915 within her hull, but in October of that year the ice tore off her rudder, water poured in, and the team took to the ice where they lived in tents. A month later, they watched in silence as her stern rose in the air, paused and then slid under. The ice closed leaving nothing but twenty-eight men.

Did the crew of Endurance survive?

For six months they survived on the ice living on penguins, seals and even their dogs. In April of 1916, they reached the edge of the pack where they took to the lifeboats they had saved from the Endurance. Six days later, more dead than alive, they reached what they called the ‘gruesome’ rock of Elephant Island. Realising they would perish if they stayed there, Shackleton took their best boat, the James Caird, and set off across five hundred miles of the most consistently savage seas on earth to seek help from the whaling stations on South Georgia. Two weeks later they made it, but they were on the wrong side of the Island. To reach the whaling stations they had to cross a snow-clad mountain chain. They succeeded and, against all odds, all the men on Elephant Island were rescued. Twenty-eight men went in, and twenty-eight came out. It should not have happened, but it did. It truly was The Great Escape.

Was the Endurance ship ever found?

In August 2012, Mensun Bound and a friend (who wishes to remain anonymous) met in a coffee bar on the Old Brompton Road in South Kensington. Both were passionate about shipwrecks and the sea. Mensun’s friend came up with the idea to mount a search for the Endurance, and everything that followed was driven by his leadership, technology, technicians and money. The original plan was to commence the search in December 2013, but this proved more challenging than expected. Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) had to be acquired and teams trained to operate them. It was not until 2019 that an expedition was equipped, trained and ready to begin the search. The first attempt to find Endurance failed. Things went wrong: the ice was extremely aggressive and their search vehicle was lost. Having learned some hard lessons, the search resumed in 2022, and on 5 March, they found the wreck at a depth of three thousand meters within the original search box drawn up by Mensun for the 2019 campaign. As predicted when the project was launched at the Royal Geographical Society in 2017, the Endurance was upright, proud of the seabed, three-dimensionally intact and in a superb state of preservation.

The Endurance was known as the ‘unreachable’ wreck – therefore it follows that the search to find her was the greatest wreck hunt ever. Mensun Bound was the only one who was there when the project was conceived, and still there ten years later when the wreck was found. The story of this incredible adventure, and all its highs and lows, is told in his best-selling book, The Ship Beneath the Ice. 

Maritime archaeologist Mensun Bound takes readers on a journey through one of the most extraordinary discoveries in modern history: the location of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s long-lost ship, Endurance. Lost to the Antarctic ice in 1915, the ship’s sinking became part of Shackleton’s legendary tale of survival. For over a century, the ship’s final resting place remained a mystery – until a daring mission in 2022 found it. Bound’s first-hand account of the two high-stakes expeditions is complete with stunning images, including Frank Hurley’s original photos from Shackleton’s voyage.

Is there a film about Shackleton's Endurance?

Out on 2 November 2024, National Geographic's documentary film Endurance tells the story of how Sir Ernest Shackleton kept his crew alive for over a year and how, over a century later, a team of modern-day explorers set out to find the sunken ship. It will be available to stream on Disney+ and Hulu.