Wonders in the Deep – Mensun Bound & Mark Frary
Mensun Bound came to public attention when he headed the expedition which discovered Shackleton’s Endurance in 2022. Born in the Falklands, Bound has been a marine archaeologist all his life (see biography below). Wonders in the Deep – the title comes from a dedication Queen Alexandra wrote in a Bible she gave to Shackleton before his doomed expedition to Antarctica – charts the history of ship-building and the last 5,000 years of civilisation through shipwrecks and the artefacts discovered (or, in some cases, recovered) from these wrecks.
First Impressions
The book itself is gorgeous, the colours on the cover are beautiful. The artwork is tasteful, and the gold foiled text gives it a nice touch. It has a solid feel, the block is perfectly cut and it has a nice heft to it. Opening it up for the first time, the weight of the paper stock for the inner leaf is noticeable. There was no perceptible smell from the printing and binding process.
The paper stock for the book is glossy, which makes the photos and artwork pop – more on this later, however. The binding is strong and well executed and the book opens with no cracking sounds. Looking at the colophon, it is nice to see the list of typefaces used as well as the company that set the layout. The colophon also includes the ISBN for the e-book version, implying that the same digital file will be used for the e-book as for the print edition. The copy I purchased is from the first printing of the first edition.
All in all, the first impression is of a high quality book that’s worth the price. However, due to the interaction between my skin and the gold lettering, some of that has smudged off the front cover.
Authors
Mensun Bound is world-famous underwater archaeologist, bestselling author and fifth-generation Falkland Islander. He has directed some of the biggest and deepest underwater excavations ever conducted, including a sixth-century BCE Etruscan vessel off the island of Giglio, a wreck from the Classical period in the Aeolian Islands, a Roman freighter carrying works of art off North Africa, an Elizabethan ship full of military supplies in the English Channel, a cargo of Ming porcelain on a Portuguese naos in the Indian Ocean, a Dutch VOC trader in the Straits of Malacca, a cannon site in the Straits of Gibraltar, an East Indiaman off the Cape Verde Isles, Admiral Graf von Spee’s flagship Scharnhorst that went down in the battle off the Falklands, and a junk full of beautiful figured wares that was lost in the South China Sea off Vietnam.
Bound’s work has been the focus of numerous documentaries, most notably a four-part series by the Discovery Channel entitled Lost Ships. In 2012 Bound was one of the proponents behind the project to locate Shackleton’s legendary Endurance and was later the Director of Exploration on the search which, ten years later, found the ‘unreachable’ ship, which he chronicled in his acclaimed book, The Ship Beneath The Ice.
Mark Frary is a prolific writer and author whose books include Aiming High, the biography of ski and travel pioneer Erna Low, and De/Cipher, a history of cryptology. He has also written several popular science books including The Origins of the Universe for Dummies (with Stephen Pincock) on Big Bang theory and How to Get A Sofa Around a Corner which explains how to use science and maths to tackle everyday problems.
He is a reular contributor to newspapers and magazines on a range of topics and was previously The Times’ ski correspondent and the Sunday Times’ travel agony uncle.
Before becoming a writer, Mark worked as a particle physicist at the CERN laboratory in Switzerland.
He was born in Norfolk and lives in Bedfordshire.
Content
The book starts with an introductory chapter about shipwrecks, their causes and some archaeological considerations related to shipwrecks, before diving (excuse the pun) straight into a chapter about some of the oldest ships ever discovered. Following this them, Bound & Frary chart the development of [Western] civilisation mainly via shipwrecks of the Mediterranean. A couple of chapters are dedicated to Far Eastern wrecks and discoveries; they then cross the Atlantic to the Americas.
The end of the age of sail and the rise of steam is covered, before a brief excursion to the “Ice Ships” detailing the discovery of shipwrecks in the North-West passage and the discovery of Endurance. A chapter concerning the German World War One battleship Scharnhorst is followed by a surprisingly long section (in comparison) about the discovery and partial salvage of Admiral Graf Spee in the River Plate estuary. A brief look at some modern wrecks (spoiler alert: there are not very many, as Bound explains in his text) concludes with a slightly anti-climactic warning about humanity’s effect on the sea.
The endmatter consists of a glossary of terms, acknowledgments, a substantial set of endnotes (260 over 15 pages!), picture credits, an index, and finally the author biographies reproduced above.
Reading Impressions
Bound and Frary spin an engaging tale, I never felt that I was forcing myself to have to turn the pages. As a boatbuilder, the early chapters were fascinating. I enjoyed the additional history the authors detail, which adds context to the underwater finds. Bound adds some entertaining personal anecdotes to a number of the wrecks detailed which helps to keep the reader engaged. The short chapters make it easy to pick up and read in short bursts.
There is a very strong emphasis on Mediterranean and European history, but some Asian wrecks are covered; however, I did have the feeling the “maritime history of the world” (as stated in the blurb) could have maybe included more content from the far east and Pacific – however, this would certainly have made for a far longer volume of text.
The book is impeccably researched, as shown by the number of endnotes, and is to be expected from an experienced scholar and researcher. Which makes the inclusion of an engraving depicting the Siege of Yorktown during the American Civil War (April 1862) to illustrate the Siege of Yorktown in the American Revolutionary War (September to October 1781) somewhat jarring.
At times, I found myself switching to my tablet to ask Mr. Google about some of the topics, and also to find more illustrations; due to the sheer amount of content Bound and Frary cover in the book, they cannot go into depth, and many chapters feel too short.
The glossy paper, while it makes the pictures pop, does have a tendency to reflect light, making the text illegible, and thus requiring the book to be held in just the right position to be able to read the text.
Rating
All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I would strongly recommend it to anyone interested in maritime history and marine archaeology. The quality of the produced book deserves 5 stars, the layout gets 4.5 stars, and I would rate the content at 4 stars, as I felt there could have been a bit more depth in parts.
Quality
Layout
Content
Total
Colophon
Title: Wonders in the Deep
Authors: Mensun Bound & Mark Frary
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
Publication date: 26 Sept. 2024
Language: English
Print length: 416 pages
Hardback ISBN: 978-1-3985-1740-1
eBook ISBN: 978-1-3985-1742-5
RRP: £30 / US$43.50 / AU$ 49.99 / NZ$ 59.99
Purchased from Amazon, 25/9/2024 for £21.19
Links
Get your copy from Amazon UK (I may earn a small commission if you purchase through these links):
