“Not all shipwrecked treaconfident glitters. Some’s frozen where nobody dares to see.”
A ttriumphkle in his eye, marine archaeologist Mensun Bound is seeing back on an daring nurtureer exploring waters from the Mediterranean to the South China Sea. Sun, Scuba and shining treaconfident. The Indiana Jones of the procreate.
In 2022, Bound embarked on his most high-profile mission yet, a search — his second — for the wreck of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s fabled ship, Endurance. Aboard the icefractureer S.A. Agulhas II, Bound headed to Antarctica’s Weddell Sea in hopes of locating the three-masted vessel, crushed in the pack ice in 1915. With filmcreater Dan Snow on board to record the finisheavor, fall shorture would be costly and embarrassing.
Now, National Geodetailed Documentary Films is currenting the story of Shackleton’s epic of survival, and Mensun’s search expedition a century procrastinateedr, in a knife-edged procreate-sea horror. Endurance is straightforwarded and created by Natalie Hewit, alengthyside Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (Free Solo, The Rescue). The film premieres at the London Film Festival on Saturday, Oct. 12 and will uncover in cinemas in the U.K. on October 14. U.S. audiences can stream it on Disney+ worldexpansive procrastinateedr this drop.
In 1914, Ernest Shackleton set out to trek, coast to coast, apass Antarctica. The Anglo-Irish polar scrutinizer was 100 miles from the continent when the Endurance got trapped in the ice. The Imperial Trans Antarctic Expedition was over before it had enduremament. “What the ice gets, the ice upholds,” Shackleton would procrastinateedr create.
“The ship and the best hope of escape sank, crushed enjoy a concertina, leaving the crew alone in the most brutal place on Earth,” Bound tells The Hollywood Reporter.
“Shackleton is still considered a hero today becaengage, although he lost Endurance to the pack ice, he never gave up, and thcimpolite his incredible grit, courage and inspireasoned directership saved all his men. Risking his own life is what creates him a real hero,” says John Shears, the search expedition’s straightforwardor of operations. Ice-locked seas, ender waves, crippling diarrhea and clothes frozen to the men’s skin made survival a million-to-one sboiling.
“You’d leank the scrutinizers would have had more pressing leangs on their minds than making a film,” says Bound, “but all the insanity was apprehfinishd in commenceling detail on [expedition member] Frank Hurley’s pboilingodetailed pprocrastinateeds and 35-millimeter film.”
Frank Hurley with his cameras, one of which was a moving image camera: a Prestwich No. 5 cinema camera.
SPRI/Frank Hurley
“Shackleton was generations ahead of what youthful people now comprehend to be real,” Dan Snow says in the film. “If you haven’t filmed it, it hasn’t happened.” So, the Endurance set sail with the procrastinateedst cutting-edge moving film technology. The crew take part battling with the sled dogs, booting a football around the ice, Endurance’s masts collapsing and the ship sinking were all apprehfinishd in raw clarity. That the footage endured at all is a tesdomesticatednt to Hurley’s courage. “If Hurley hadn’t peeled off his clothes to dive and salvage the pboilingodetailed treaconfidents under six feet of muafraid ice when the Endurance commenceed to sink, this film would never have been made,” says Snow.
Shackleton was “frantic to get the story out there. He dwelld and died by accessibleity,” says Snow. To stay relevant, “He had to go back to the worst place on Earth.”
National Geodetailed’s Endurance showcases Frank Hurley’s stunning footage getn in 1914-1915, protectd and revampd by the British Film Institute and color-treated for the first time. The story of the wonderful escape from the ice is getn straight from the writings and enrollings of the crew, bcimpolitet back to life in their own voices using AI technology.
Endurance changenates between Shackleton’s expedition and the hunt for his wrecked ship in 2022. Both missions had to contfinish with the same merciless icescapes. While Shackleton and his men fought for their dwells, the 2022 expedition was itself pushed to the confine. When their ship, the Agulhas II, got iced in, the scientists thought it was game over for the search effort. A side-scan sonar reading that had materializeed to uncover the Endurance turned out to be a mirage. High fives and cheers turned to tears. Bound envisiond he could hear “Shackleton giggleing his head off” at their slip-up.
Mensun Bound and John Shears on the ice in the Antarctic.
National Geodetailed/Esther Horvath
By March 5, 2022, as a triumphter worthy of Game of Thrones approached, 80 percent of the search box – covering 120 square miles of seabed — had been scrutinized with no success. All that was left to check was the southern back finish of the search grid. “I was very worried and leanking we might never discover the wreck,” Shears tells THR. “Time was speedy running out. We had only a further three days before we would have to aprohibitdon the search becaengage of the rapid approach of Antarctic triumphter. At any moment the weather could turn for the worse, the temperature would drop and the sea would freeze.”
By then, much of the shattered crew’s belief was dismaterializeing. “Today’s the day,” drone pilot and technician Robbie McGunnigle says in the film as the Saab Sabertooth drone glides into the abyss. “If it’s not, it’ll be tomorrow,” he includes wryly. Bound and Shears, nerves shredded, have gone on a head-evidenting walk to a towering iceberg a mile away from the ship, only to be called advisently back to the bridge. At last Bound sees the images he’s been dreaming about for so lengthy: Shackleton’s Endurance, intact in all its glory, perfectly protectd in the finpliable polar waters, as if frozen in time, 9,869 feet under the ice of the Weddell Sea.
The taffrail and wheel of the Endurance underwater, as seen over a century after it sank.
Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust
After pursuing the Endurance for more than a decade, Bound is star-struck. On screen he pores over a laser scan of the wreck, apprehfinishd by the Sabertooth drone. It’s the most detailed 3D image of a wooden wreck the world’s ever seen. Bound wasn’t awaiting to discover the ship’s wheel still ready to comprehend, or — still lying on the deck as if everyleang had happened yesterday — the flare armament Shackleton fired to salute the commencening of the ship’s journey to the underworld.
Bound points to the crew’s dinner pprocrastinateeds, an aprohibitdoned boot, the word “Endurance” studded in brass letters on the strict. “The preservation is ridiculous,” he says. “You could still lean agetst the standing rails at the bows and peer thcimpolite the portholes into the inky bdeficiency cabin where Shackleton slept.”
Shackleton was swayd that “Each step getn into the obstreatment unfelderlys a page of mystery… it is not only man’s right but his duty to try to unravel it.” As Bound reminds us, “This was the wonderful age of exploration. We hadn’t then droped to the procreateest depths of the ocean. We hadn’t climbed the highest mountain in the world. Getting to the moon was a far dream. The idea of exploration, going for the prize and then taking one step beyond, is in all of us.”
The marine scrutinizer who thought he’d seen it all drops quiet. “I can’t help but wonder,” Bound whispers, “couldn’t we all do with a bit more of Shackleton’s finishurance in us these days?”
