Mensun Bound


Mensun Bound is a British maritime archaeologist born in Port Stanley, Falkland Islands. He is best known for directing the excavation of the Etruscan 6th-century BC shipwreck off Giglio Island, Italy, the oldest known shipwreck of the Archaic era, and the Hoi An Cargo which revolutionized our understanding of Ming-Vietnamese porcelain from Vietnam's art-historical Golden Age.
Bound became more involved in deep-ocean archaeology. In 2014–15, he led a search for the Imperial German East Asia Squadron, sunk during the Battle of the Falkland Islands in 1914, and since then in AUV and ROV surveys in depths up to 6000 m. He eventually located the squadron's flagship,, in April 2019, 105 years after her sinking.
Most recently, Bound was in Antarctica as director of exploration for the Weddell Sea Expedition 2019, tasked with finding Ernest Shackleton's ship, Endurance, which sank under the ice in 1915. Although they succeeded in cutting through the pack to the point where the Endurance sank, the hunt had to be abandoned when the autonomous underwater vehicle conducting the seabed search failed to arrive at a programmed rendezvous point with the ship.
Discovery Channel has called Bound "the Indiana Jones of the Deep".

Early life and education

Michael "Mensun" Bound was born on 4 February 1953 in Stanley, Falkland Islands. He is a fifth-generation Islander whose great-great grandfather, James Biggs, arrived with the first colonists to Port Louis on the brig Hebe in January 1842. His great grandfather, William Biggs, was the first to raise the Union Jack when the settlement was moved to Jackson's Harbour in 1843-44.
Bound's early education was in the Falkland Islands and Montevideo, Uruguay. After high school, he worked at sea on the steam ship Darwin. In 1972, he received a scholarship from the Leopold Schepp Foundation to attend Fairleigh Dickinson University, from where he graduated Summa Cum Laude in Ancient History. Whilst undertaking a further degree in Classical Art and Archaeology at Rutgers University, he was a research assistant in Greek Pottery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. In 1976 he was awarded a Commonwealth scholarship to Lincoln College, Oxford University, to study classical archaeology. In 1985, he was given a Junior Research Fellowship at St Catherine's College, Oxford University. At the same time, under the Chairmanship of Alan Bullock, he was appointed Director of Oxford University MARE, the first academic maritime archaeological unit in England. In 1994, he became the Triton Fellow in Maritime Archaeology at St. Peter's College, Oxford. He retired from academic life in 2013 to pursue his interest in deep-ocean archaeology.

Early archaeological experience

Bound's student experience as an archaeologist was on land, where he worked on Roman villa sites outside Rome and various sites in the English Midlands. Bound's underwater archaeological career began in 1979 when he worked for George Bass of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology in Texas on sites off the coast of Turkey. This was followed by the Madrague de Giens shipwreck off the South of France and the Mary Rose in England.

Principal excavations and surveys

Fine wares from the site consisted mainly of Corinthian, Laconian, Ionian and Etruscan fabrics representing a range of shapes. Some were painted with human figures, animals, florals and mythological motifs. The storage jars were of Etruscan, Samian, East Greek and Punic-Phoenician origin; some contained pitch, olives and olive oil. Other finds included amber, lamps, arrowheads, parts of helmets, copper nuggets, iron bars, gaming, bones, musical pipes, a wooden writing plaque, callipers, lead and copper ingots. Surviving ship's timber displayed ‘sewn’ joinery techniques.
The entire top floor of the national underwater museum at Porto Santo Stefano is dedicated to the finds from the Giglio ship. The material occupies the entire top floor of the National Underwater Archaeological Museum at Porto Santo Stefano
Diving was a 24-hour operation working at a maximum dive-table depth of 82 meters. Saturation diving techniques were employed in which divers lived in pressurized modules on the deck and were transported to and from the site in a dive-bell. Following the excavation, looting of the site resumed.
Six different Vietnamese museums have major collections from the wreck on permanent display; the main finds on display in the National Museum, Hanoi.
Following the survey, Bound was given permission by the Uruguayan Navy and Ministry of Culture to recover one of the 5.9-inch guns which is now on display outside the maritime museum in Montevideo.
.In later years, Bound was part of the small team that raised the range-finder and the bronze eagle from the ship's stern. Because of the Nazi symbol held within its talons, the eagle's recovery was controversial and after being displayed at a Montevideo hotel for two months, the eagle was moved to storage in a sealed crate in a navy warehouse; a Uruguayan court has now ordered that the eagle must be sold at auction.
Bound has authored or edited over 100 articles and several books on archaeology , Lost Ships , The Archaeology of Ships of War, Archeologia Sottomarina alle Isole Eolie,, A Ship Cast Away about Alderney with Jason Monaghan. Books about Bound's work include Dragon Sea by F. Pope on the South China Sea excavation; Tarquin’s Ship by A McKee, on the Giglio ship excavation. Also, children's book The Search for the Oldest Shipwrecks in the World by D. Thornton tells the story of the Giglio ship.

Other activities and awards

Bound is a trustee of the Falkland Islands Foundation, the World Ship Trust, the Council of the Nautical Archaeology Society, the Alderney Maritime Trust, the Friends of the Falklands Museum and the Falkland Islands Maritime Heritage Trust.
He has organised four international conferences on maritime archaeology. He is a Fellow of the Explorers Club, New York.
He has lectured widely on maritime archaeology for the British Council, and a range of museums, universities, learned societies, archaeological organisations and cruise ships. Has edited a book series, held Visiting Fellowships, conducted coursework and been a doctoral examiner. His awards include ‘Diver of the Year, Italy’ 1985, and in 1992 he received the Colin McLeod medallion from the British Sub Aqua Club for ‘Furthering international co-operation in diving’.

Documentaries

Bound's work has been the focus of many documentaries in England, Italy and the US, including an award-winning, four-part series entitled Lost Ships by the Discovery Channel, which covered the Agamemnon, the Hoi An wreck, the Graf Spee and the Mahdia ship. The BBC has made several documentaries on Bound's work including Queen Elizabeth's Lost Guns, about the recovery, replication and test-firing of an Elizabethan iron cannon from the Alderney wreck. Lost Ships - The Hunt for the Kaiser's Superfleet, produced by TVT Productions for Smithsonian Channel, covers Bound's search for the lost fleet from the Battle of the Falklands in 1914