The National Maritime Historical Society

presents

The Ship Beneath the Ice: The Discovery of Shackleton’s Endurance

with Mensun Bound

Tuesday, 26 September 2023 7:00 PM

South Street Seaport Museum

Aboard the Wavertree

89 South Street, New York City

Register for the Lecture >>

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Get your tickets today to hear British marine archaeologist Mensun Bound, the “Indiana Jones of the Deep,” discuss his most recent expedition that discovered Sir Ernest Shackleton’s (1874–1922) lost ship Endurance on the Antarctic sea floor in an excellent state of preservation.

Endurance was last seen in 1915, when Irish-British explorer Shackleton and his 27 men watched in dismay as the ship, crushed by ice, sank into the icy depths. The crew’s mission, as members of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, was a daring plan to reach the South Pole by traveling over the then-unmapped terrain of the East Antarctic.

In this fascinating program, moderated by Jonathan Boulware, CEO & president of South Street Seaport Museum, Bound will offer a firsthand account of this historic rediscovery of the vessel beneath the ice of the Weddell Sea, near the Antarctic Peninsula.

Beyond the tale of the Endurance, Bound will address how the shifting climate and escalating global heating pose an imminent threat to the safeguarding of historic shipwreck sites. This presentation promises to be an enlightening exploration of the past and a timely reflection on our planet’s future.

This exciting program is offered to you free, but tickets are required, and all donations are gratefully accepted. The lecture starts at 7 PM aboard Wavertree. **Please note that access to the Wavertree requires climbing a small set of ladder-type stairs and an angled gangway.

Mensun Bound’s book, The Ship Beneath the Ice: The Discovery of Shackleton’s Endurance, will be available for purchase and signing at the event.

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About the Speaker

Born in the Falkland Islands, Mensun Bound was the Triton Fellow in Maritime Archaeology at St Peter’s College, Oxford, and the director of the first academic unit for underwater archaeology in England. Known as the “Indiana Jones of the Deep,” Bound has conducted wreck surveys and excavations all over the world in a career that spanned 40 years. His book The Ship Beneath the Ice: The Discovery of Shackleton’s Endurance is a best seller in the United Kingdom.

Bound has a unique connection to the Seaport Museum and National Maritime Historical Society. He served on the World Ship Trust with Seaport Museum founder and then-NMHS president Peter Stanford (1927–2016). Additionally, Bound’s great-grandfather William Biggs was a shipwright and a carpenter in Port Stanley who, in 1910–1911, likely surveyed the damage to the 1885 tall ship Wavertree after her dismasting while attempting to round Cape Horn. Decades later, Wavertree was rediscovered in Argentina, and brought to New York City to become the flagship of the South Street Seaport Museum’s fleet of historic vessels.