They finally found the Endurance. 

I woke up to news on Wednesday about the discovery of a 106-year-old shipwreck, and I immediately thought of my dad.

He loved to tell the story of Ernest Shackleton’s maiden voyage in this ship that now sits 10,000 feet below the surface of the Weddell Sea.

Every winter, this frigid body of water freezes over and becomes part of Antarctica, a continent that Shackleton and his crew were trying to cross in 1914.

The only problem was that their wooden ship froze in ice that year. I can remember my dad sitting in the passenger seat of the car, during my mom’s turn driving on a road trip, halfway turned around and telling us the details he remembered from one of the books he read about the shipwreck. 

These were the pre-YouTube days. The years when having a fresh VHS tape felt like having a full bank account. When a new National Geographic documentary meant having dinner early so we could watch it together.

Before there were podcasts, there were dad stories.

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