[imagesource: Mensun Bound]

Marine archaeologist Mensun Bound was likely on cloud nine as a camera found the word ‘ENDURANCE’ on a shipwreck that he once thought impossible to find.

Bound, who led the Endurance22 expedition team of 110 researchers and scientists, successfully located the sunken Endurance 107 years after it was abandoned by explorer Ernest Shackleton and his team in 1915.

Shackleton is considered a hero for leading his team of 27 to safety after the ship was crushed, and eventually wholly swallowed, by pack ice and freezing waters.

As Bound says, “with all his bravery, determination, leadership skills as well as his imperfections, Shackleton should be as important in our national bloodstream as the likes of Nelson and Churchill.”

So when he finally laid eyes on the ship, found in near-perfect condition 3 000 metres below the surface of the Wendell Sea, he said it was like “a huge ta-dah! moment” and one that “sent shivers up my spine”.

The miraculous discovery was made all the more remarkable by the fact that the ship was “sitting upright, bold and beautiful and largely intact”.

The find is not only special historically, but holds particular and personal weight for Bound. Per The Telegraph, he has always had a special connection to the late polar explorer:

“Shackleton has been a lifelong thing for me,” he explains. He grew up in the nearby Falkland Islands – and still has a home there – where the polar explorer’s “greatest escape of all time” in leading his crew of 27 to safety after the loss of their ship has made him the enduring local hero.

“I have with me right now a book on Shackleton [below] that I was given for regular Sunday school attendance in the 1960s,” he says. Indeed some reports have even suggested that Bound is related to Shackleton, who at the time of the sinking had been attempting to make the first crossing of Antarctica.

“No,” he puts me right, “not even distantly. They may be confusing it with the fact that my forebears [he is the fifth generation of his family on the Falklands] ran a pub called The First and Last where Shackleton stayed.”

Bound boasts a 40-year long career in shipwreck scavenging and ocean exploration, but the achievement of finding Shackleton’s ship has become the peak, a moment that has earned him the nickname ‘the Indiana Jones of the Deep’.

That association still needs to sink in for Bound, who has “been knocked sideways” by the success and the subsequent interest from folks all over the world.

The thing is, Bound has never really believed that it was possible to find the lost shipwreck, even turning down a mission proposed to him 10 years ago.

But this latest mission was different, with technology that simply did not exist before helping the team locate the ship in a matter of two or so weeks over a 388-square-kilometre area :

This time round they had state-of-the art Sabertooths, Swedish-made remote operated submersibles, and so were able to be in contact in real time with what was going on so far down in deep.

“We were the first to use them and it meant we could go in on anything that looked unusual.”

When sonic waves sent back signals showing signs of “an amorphous blob”, everyone knew it had to be Endurance:

“You can see a porthole that is Shackleton’s cabin. At that moment, you really do feel the breath of the great man upon the back of your neck. You can even see the paintwork. It is in such a good state that I felt in that moment we could almost raise her and sail off.”

Like this moment that Endurance was in full sail in the ice in Antarctica:

For now, Endurance will remain at the bottom of the Weddle Sea as the Antarctic Treaty contains strict rules on disturbing wrecks.

But one day, when the technology allows, Bound reckons it should be brought to the surface:

“Even though it is so well-preserved, the longer we leave it there as pollution increases and sea temperature and acidity rise, the more it will rot and what we have found will be gone, lost to learning and to heritage,” he says.

The discovery is not just about a ship at the end of the day, it is about a daring escape saga and a testament to the human spirit of exploration and resilience.

Before the SA Agulhas II and crew head back to South Africa, they will stop off at the uninhabited South Georgia island where Shackleton led his men to safety after a gruelling open-boat journey.

It is also the place where Shackleton was buried exactly 100 years to the day before Endurance was rediscovered.

[source:telegraph]