National Geographic launches a monumental documentary about Endurance, the legendary ship on which Ernest Shackleton sailed to Antarctica, and the wreck of which was found by Endurance22, with author Jukka Tuhkuri as a member of the expedition.
The ship Endurance has long been shrouded in myths and legends: led by Ernest Shackleton, this Antarctic expedition became the second most famous shipwreck in history after the Titanic, and its fate and exact location remained a mystery for over 100 years. In 2022 the Endurance22 expedition, consisting of an international team of researchers including professor Jukka Tuhkuri, traveled to Antarctica with the goal of finding Endurance, and succeeded.
This is the premise and the subject of Jukka Tuhkuri‘s book Endurance: One Myth, Two Journeys and The Weight of Ice, and it is also the premise of Endurance, the monumental documentary launched by National Geographic on October 14th. The documentary, which has been featured on the BBC, The Guardian and the Telegraph, gives ample space to the figure of Shackleton and the original Endurance expedition, so readers who are thirsty for answers and modern-day adventure will want to pick up Tuhkuri’s book even more after this.
At the dawn of 1910s, all the major conquests in the name of science and exploration seemed to have been accomplished, but traversing Antarctica from shore to shore was still up for grabs, and Ernest Shackleton wasn’t going to waste his time watching someone else do it.
This was the beginning of one of the most legendary expeditions of all times, entwined in tales and myths that have inspired numbers of books, films, and other works of art ever since. At the same time, hardly any evidence or real knowledge has been gathered about the reasons behind the sinking of Endurance, and only very few have reached even the proximity of history’s second most famous shipwreck.
In 2022, members of the international Endurance22 expedition team boarded an ice-breaking research ship built in Finland, with the mission to locate Endurance lying more than 3000 m deep beneath the surface of Weddell Sea – and succeeded.
In his book, ice researcher Jukka Tuhkuri, retells the Shackleton myth in a new light. In addition to the historical events leading to the original expedition, as well as his own experiences on the Antarctic journey, Tuhkuri sheds light on the work of polar researchers a hundred years ago and now. While scientists on Endurance tried to understand what sea ice is and how it moves, modern researchers consider how climate change is affecting it, and what it means to sea travels and our future.
Drawing on mythical past and state-of-the-art research on climate change, Endurance: One Myth, Two Journeys and the Weight of Ice is set to become the hot non-fiction book of autumn 2024. In Finland, the book is published by Siltala.