You’ve been excavating shipwrecks with your wife Jo since the early 1980s. How did you tell her you’d found Endurance?
Jo and I had a code that we’d agreed on. If we found the ship, I’d message ‘bingo’. If there were multiple underlinings, it’d mean she was in incredible condition and if I added multiple exclamation marks, it’d mean she was just knock-your-socks-off beautiful beyond words. So I sent ‘bingo’ with the lines and exclamation marks! She was sobbing with happiness. That’s how it felt on the ship for us too, a feeling of pure euphoria. At last, we had succeeded!
Mensun’s book, The Ship Beneath The Ice, is out now via Pan Macmillan. The blow-by-blow account of his two expeditions to find the Endurance can be found now where all good books are sold, including on Amazon Kindle.