The filmmaker who documented the discovery of Shackleton’s lost ship shared lessons from the bottom of the Weddell Sea with students, families, and the community
After a summer spent reading about Sir Ernest Shackleton, the Derryfield community got to experience the next chapter of the story firsthand. Natalie Hewit, director and producer of the Emmy Award-winning National Geographic documentary Endurance, visited campus at the end of September. She hosted a public screening and Q&A on Sunday, September 27th, then spent Monday, September 28th speaking at Community Meeting, visiting classes, having lunch with students, and screening the film with Upper Schoolers.
Hewit’s visit was made possible through the generosity of the Isakovich-Critz Family Fund for Community Enrichment. Kristina Isakovich, Richard Critz, and their son Patrick ’15 attended Monday’s Community Meeting.
A Story That Continues
This year, Upper School students read Endurance by Alfred Lansing and Middle School students read Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World by Jennifer Armstrong. Both books tell the story of Shackleton’s 1914 expedition, which became one of history’s great stories of resilience, leadership, and survival. Head of School Andy Chappell said that story connects directly to Derryfield’s theme for the year, Resilience in Action.
“We have talked about what that means,” Chappell told students, “not simply to endure difficulty, but to respond to it, to adapt, to rely on one another, to keep going, and sometimes to accomplish something that initially seemed impossible.”
While introducing Hewit to the Derryfield community, Chappell emphasized the lessons that impacted him most in both the story of Shackleton and the Endurance22 crew, which beat the odds over 100 years later to uncover the shipwreck, “While her films take us to extraordinary places, at their heart they are about people, about curiosity, courage, teamwork, perseverance, and what human beings are capable of when confronted with enormous challenges.”
“The Impossible Search”
Hewit, who has filmed on all seven continents, began with Shackleton’s life before Endurance. His story included a failed run for Parliament, failed businesses, and being sent home sick from his first Antarctic expedition. “That’s quite a lot of failure to deal with quite early on,” she said. “But what we see with Shackleton is that it didn’t deter him.”
The Endurance22 expedition faced its own setbacks. Prior to their departure, the 2019 Weddell Sea Expedition ended when the team lost its underwater vehicle, along with all the data it had collected, beneath the Antarctic ice. When the team returned in 2022, they had learned from that failure. They brought a tethered vehicle nicknamed “Ellie” that could send images back to the ship in real time. They also had to rethink their search plan on the spot when the shifting sea ice refused to cooperate.
Hewit’s film crew was only three people: herself and two cinematographers. They were working alongside roughly 100 expedition members aboard the S.A. Agulhas II, carrying 14 cameras, two drones, and plenty of superglue and gaffer tape. She described a false alarm early in the search, when the team found what appeared to be the wreck. “It looked like a shipwreck. It smelled like a shipwreck. It quacked like a shipwreck,” she said. “But it was not a shipwreck.”
The breakthrough came from an unexpected place. Scientists aboard the ship fed historical weather data from 1915 into a new ice-drift model. It showed that a gale had pushed the sinking ship south of where Captain Frank Worsley had estimated. On March 5, 2022, with only days left before the expedition had to head home, the team found Endurance nearly 10,000 feet down, exactly where the model predicted. Asked how she felt, Hewit gave an honest answer: “Relieved.”
Up Close with a Filmmaker
After the Community Meeting, Hewit visited Photography and Honors Physics classes and had lunch with student hosts in the Matarese Commons, where students stopped by with their questions. For Grace H. ’28, one of the lunch hosts, the chance to talk with a working filmmaker was “very surreal.”
“Being able to talk to someone who created a film with the renowned National Geographic, and to experience such a different type of job environment, leaves you inspired and intrigued,” she said.
Grace hopes to work in film and creative fields, and she found common ground with Hewit. “We were able to connect and share our joys and struggles of being creative in this day and age,” she said. “Hearing her story firsthand made it feel very personal.”
Hewit ended the day with an student screening of Endurance in the Lyceum.
“Natalie Hewit’s visit to Derryfield was so much fun,” Grace said, “and really got us to open our eyes to different fields of work.”
