Mensun Bound was born in 1953, in Stanley on the Falkland Islands. He is a leading maritime archaeologist, known for the rediscovery of Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance.
What’s your earliest memory?
I was brought up on the backstreets of Stanley near a treeless bogland. My Uncle Richie, just a little older than me, used to tell me about the bog monster who would rise from out of the peat at night and suck out people’s eyeballs. It terrified me. The power of story I suppose.
Who are your heroes?
In childhood it was Ernest Shackleton; he stayed with my family at the First and Last pub in Stanley. In adulthood it would be Horatio Nelson; we raised the only cannon proved to have been fired at the Battle of Trafalgar from HMS Agamemnon.
What book last changed your thinking?
After a wandering albatross circled us on a ship in Antarctica, I reread The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. It took on a whole new meaning: the albatross is a metaphor for the natural world; we are the cretinous Ancient Mariner that shot the beautiful bird, but we are also the Wedding Guest, the one in three that must hear. But will we?
What would be your Mastermind specialist subject?
The Battle of the River Plate in 1939. I raised one of the guns from the German pocket battleship Graf Spee that self-destructed after the battle. It’s now outside the maritime museum in Montevideo.
In which time and place, other than your own, would you like to live?
My dream was of square-riggers; being on the poop with the ship heeled in the trades and gushing white water from the scuppers while I battled to bring it around Cape Horn in the face of the implacable westerlies. Silly, I know.
What’s your theme tune?
“If You Want to Be a Bird” from the soundtrack of Easy Rider. When I was a young seaman in the South Atlantic, it was what we used to sing in the mess on Saturday nights to a rinky-tinky piano. All those drunken, twisty, out-of-tune, couldn’t-give-a-damn, male voices raising the roof on great lyrics. Still gives me shivers.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Live like Shackleton: grab life by the scruff and kick the living daylights out of it.
What’s currently bugging you?
Lots of things: blow-in magazine adverts that fall out on the floor; so-called customer helplines, the letter H; the colour camel; people with Birmingham accents… I could go on. Just joking about Birmingham accents.
What single thing would make your life better?
More quiet time with my wife, Jo – we have been together since we were students. Since my book The Ship Beneath the Ice was published two years ago life has been non-stop. But we are not complaining.
When were you happiest?
Exploring the deep ocean robotically. Some unbelievable moments, including finding the German flagship Scharnhorst from the Battle of the Falklands in 1914, and Shackleton’s Endurance.
Are we all doomed?
Yep, I’m afraid so. We have so many beasts in our basement and not a clue about how to tackle any of them. Ice loss, ocean warming, ocean acidification, the albedo effect, the destruction of phytoplankton that capture carbon and give us our every second breath of oxygen, and so on. We’re flying blind, all fuses lit. But I try. I am part of a small group doing our best to find and bring on our next generation of scientists – they are our only hope.
“Wonders in the Deep” by Mensun Bound and Mark Frary is published by Simon & Schuster UK
[See also: David Spiegelhalter Q&A: “I can’t think of anything worse than eternity”]
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This article appears in the 25 Sep 2024 issue of the New Statesman, All-out war