MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Elisha Kent Kane Society awards Gold Medal to Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust trustee Mensun Bound

Mensun expressed his gratitude and thanked the Society for the work it did as custodians of Elisha Kent Kane’s considerable legacy

At a recent black-tie dinner in Manhattan, the Elisha Kent Kane Historical Society, presented its Gold Medal to Mensun Bound, Trustee of the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust (FMHT). The prestigious award was in recognition of his role in discovering Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance that sank beneath the ice of the Weddell Sea on 21 November 1915. The search, which was directed by the FMHT, working in close collaboration with the deep-water robotics company Ocean Infinity, found the wreck at a depth of 3008 m on 5 March 2022.

The origins of the medal date back to the beginning of the twentieth century. Its early recipients included Commander Robert F. Peary (1902), credited with having been first to reach the North Pole, and Sir Ernest Shackleton (1920) who led two expeditions to Antarctica. Most recently the medal was awarded to Rear Admiral George Steele (2000) who piloted the first submarine transit of the North West Passage.

The medal was minted in New York City from moulds taken from the original medal that was awarded to Admiral Richard E. Byrd (1926), the pioneering American Polar explorer and aviator. It was crafted from ‘very fine silver before being finalized with a layer of 14-karat gold.’ The minting was overseen by Wylie A. Adames. The silk ribbon was stitched by a specialist in the Dominican Republic and the display case was purpose-made in Italy.

 Most recently the medal was awarded to Rear Admiral George Steele (2000)
who piloted the first submarine transit of the North West Passage.

Elisha Kent Kane was a 19th century polar hero who was medical officer on the first Grinnall mission to rescue, or determine the fate of Sir John Franklin’s1845 attempt to traverse the Northwest Passage. At Beechey Island in August 1850, he found the remains of an encampment and three graves from the lost expedition. In 1853 he raised the funds and led a second search for Franklin, during which he went further north than any previous explorer. Kane became a national hero and when he died in 1857, his funeral was the largest in American history before that of Lincoln.

After receiving the honour (which was presented to him by the Chairman of the Society, Chas Cowing), Mensun expressed his gratitude and thanked the Society for the work it did as custodians of Elisha Kent Kane’s considerable legacy. “Kane,” he said, “was considered a model of humane leadership, and in that regard was an inspiration to Shackleton. Although Kane and Shackleton were very different in their purpose, attitude to science and style of leadership, both were defined by survival rather than polar conquest. In what might be interpreted as a mark of esteem, Shackleton had Kanes’s books with him on the Endurance.”