On November 21, 1915, after sailing more than ten thousand miles from Norway to the Weddell Sea, the Endurance finally succumbed to the surrounding ice. Ernest Shackleton and his crew had navigated the 144-foot, three-masted wooden vessel to Antartica intent on becoming the first to cross the White Continent, but pack ice trapped them in place offshore. They watched in silence as the ship's stern rose twenty feet in the air and disappeared into the frigid sea, then spent five harrowing months marooned on the ice in its wake. Penguins and seals were their only sustenance as Shackleton's expedition to push the limits of human strength took a new form: one of survival against overwhelming odds. As this legendary story entered the annals of polar exploration, it inspired a new global race to find the Endurance, by all accounts "the world's most unreachable shipwreck." Several missions failed, thwarted, as Shackleton was, by the unpredictable Weddell Sea. Finally, a century to the day after Shackleton's burial, renowned marine archeologist Mensun Bound and an elite team of explorers discovered the lost wreck. Nearly ten thousand feet below the ice lay a remarkably preserved Endurance, its name still emblazoned on the stern. The Ship Beneath the Ice chronicles two dramatic expeditions into what Shackleton called "the worst portion of the worst sea on Earth." Bound experienced failure and despair in his attempts to locate the wreck, and, like Shackleton before him, very nearly found his vessel locked in ice. Complete with captivating photos from the 1914 expedition and of the Endurance as Bound and his teammates found it, this inspiring, modern-day adventure narrative captures the intrepid spirit that joins two mariners across the centuries - both of whom accomplished the impossible.