“Not all shipwrecked treasures shine. Some are frozen where no one dares look.”
With a twinkle in his eye, marine archaeologist Mensun Bound looks back on an adventurous career exploring waters from the Mediterranean to the South China Sea. Sun, diving and shining treasures. The Indiana Jones of the deep.
In 2022, Bound embarked on its most high-profile mission yet, its second search for the wreck of Sir Ernest Shackleton's legendary ship, the Endurance. Aboard the icebreaker SA Agulhas II, Bound headed to Antarctica's Weddell Sea in hopes of locating the three-masted vessel, crushed by pack ice in 1915. With filmmaker Dan Snow on board to document the feat, the failure it would have been expensive and embarrassing.
Now, National Geographic Documentary Films presents the story of Shackleton's survival epic and the Mensun research expedition a century later in edgy, deep-sea horror. Resistence is directed and produced by Natalie Hewit, along with Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (Free Only, The rescue). The film will premiere at the London Film Festival on Saturday 12 October and will be released in UK cinemas on 14 October. US audiences will be able to stream it on Disney+ worldwide later this fall.
In 1914 Ernest Shackleton set out on a coast-to-coast trek across Antarctica. The Anglo-Irish polar explorer was 100 miles from the continent when the Endurance became trapped in the ice. The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition was over before it began. “What ice gets, ice keeps,” Shackleton would later write.
“The ship and their best hope of escape sank, crushed like an accordion, leaving the crew alone in the most brutal place on Earth,” says Bound The Hollywood journalist.
“Shackleton is still considered a hero today because, despite losing Resistence on the ice floe, he never gave up and, thanks to his incredible grit, courage and inspiring leadership, he saved all his men. Risking his life is what makes him a true hero,” says John Shears, director of operations for the search expedition. Icy seas, killer waves, paralyzing diarrhea, and clothes frozen to men's skin made survival a one-in-a-million chance.
“You'd think the explorers had more pressing things on their minds than making a movie,” says Bound, “but all the madness was captured in astonishing detail on [expedition member] Frank Hurley's photographic plates and 35 millimeter film.
Frank Hurley with his cameras, one of which was a moving image camera – a Prestwich No. 5.
SPRI/Frank Hurley
“Shackleton was generations ahead of what young people now know to be true,” Dan Snow says in the film. “If you didn't film it, it didn't happen.” So, the Endurance set sail with the latest cutting edge motion film technology. The crew play sled dog fighting, kick a ball on the ice, the Endurance's trees collapsing and the ship sinking were all captured with stark clarity. The fact that the footage survived is a testament to Hurley's courage. “If Hurley hadn't taken off his clothes to dive and retrieve the photographic treasures under six feet of soft ice when the Resistence started to sink in, this movie would never get made,” Snow says.
Shackleton “was desperate to get the story out there. He lived and died by advertising,” Snow says. To stay relevant, he “had to go back to the worst place on Earth.”
from National Geographic Resistence presents Frank Hurley's splendid films made in 1914-1915, preserved and restored by the British Film Institute and treated in color for the first time. The story of the great escape from the ice is taken directly from the crew's writings and recordings, brought to life in their own voices using AI technology.
Resistence alternates between Shackleton's expedition and the hunt for his destroyed ship in 2022. Both missions had to contend with the same unforgiving frozen landscapes. While Shackleton and his men fought for their lives, the 2022 expedition itself was pushed to its limits. When their ship, the Agulhas II, crashed, scientists thought it was game over for the research effort. A side-scan sonar reading that appeared to reveal the Endurance turned out to be a mirage. High fives and applause turned to tears. Bound imagined he could hear “Shackleton laughing his ass off” at their mistake.
Mensun Bound and John Shears on the ice of Antarctica.
National Geographic/Esther Horvath
By March 5, 2022, as a winter worthy of game of Thrones came close, 80% of the search box, covering 120 square miles of the seabed – had been explored without success. All that remained to control was the southern end of the search grid. “I was very worried and thought we would never find the wreck,” Shears says THR. “Time was running out quickly. We only had three more days before we had to abandon the search due to the rapidly approaching Antarctic winter. At any moment the weather could get worse, the temperature could drop and the sea could freeze.”
By then, much of the shattered crew's belief was fading. “Today is the day,” says drone pilot and technician Robbie McGunnigle in the film as the Saab Sabertooth drone slides into the abyss. “If it isn't, it will be tomorrow,” he adds wryly. Bound and Shears, nerves frayed, set out on a walk to clear their heads towards a towering iceberg a mile away from the ship, only to be urgently called back to the deck. Bound finally sees the images he has dreamed of for so long: those of Shackleton Resistenceintact in all its splendor, perfectly preserved in the frigid polar waters, as if frozen in time, 9,869 feet beneath the ice of the Weddell Sea.
The crown and wheel of the Endurance underwater, seen over a century after its sinking.
Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust
After pursuing Endurance for more than a decade, Bound is star struck. On the screen, carefully observe a laser scan of the wreckage, captured by the Sabertooth drone. It's the most detailed 3D image of a wooden wreck the world has ever seen. Bound did not expect to find the ship's rudder still ready to grab him, or – still lying on the deck as if it had all happened yesterday – the flare gun that Shackleton fired to greet the start of the ship's journey to the underworld.
Bound points to the crew's dinner plates, an abandoned boot, the word “Endurance” studded in brass letters on the stern. “Conservation is ridiculous,” he says. “You could still lean on the rails at the bow and peer through the portholes into the inky black cabin where Shackleton slept.”
Shackleton was convinced that “Every step taken towards the unknown reveals a page of mystery… it is not only man's right but his duty to try to reveal it”. As Bound reminds us, “This was the great age of exploration. Then we had not yet descended into the deepest depths of the ocean. We hadn't climbed the highest mountain in the world. Getting to the Moon was a distant dream. The idea of exploring, aiming for the prize and then taking a step further, is in all of us.”
The marine explorer who thought he had seen it all is silent. “I can't help but wonder,” Bound whispers, “couldn't we all need a little more of Shackleton's stamina in us these days?”