Unfortunately the volcanoes mentioned in yesterdy’ s blogpost turned out to be a damp squib today – there was no sign of the putative island and with misty weather we never saw the South Sandwich islands. Mark Moore who was going to write the blog today was delayed by having a heroic work day, combined with his birthday... and there has not been anything notable new today in the way of wildlife so we will slip back today to the heroic age of Antarctic exploration and particularly Ernest Shackleton whose epic voyage seems to have been a bit of sub-them of this cruise.
Classic sketch map summary of Shackletons voyage with our track roughly superimposed on it.
Ernest Shackleton if you have not encountered the story, or need a little reminder, set off in 1914 aiming to walk right across Antarctica. He started the journey from South Georgia, sailing south in the Endurance into the Weddell Sea but became caught in the ice in January 1915,( i. e. some 98 years ago). After a winter trapped in the slowly drifting ice Endurance was finally crushed, and sank in November. After several more months on the ice the parry were eventually able to take to the sea in the ship’ s boats and with some difficulty got to Elephant Island. Unfortunately Elephant Island was both uninhabited and inhospitable so Shackleton decided to leave with a small group in the best boat, the James Caird, to seek help in South Georgia, a mere 1300 km away. By an extraordinary feat of navigation they actually reached South Georgia safely. But they landed on the south side and to reach the whaling stations, they had to climb over the alpine mountains of the island to get to the north side. Finally, in August they were able to return to Elephant Island and rescue the party trapped there. Except this was not quite the final leg as the other half of the expedition which had intended to approach from the other side of Antarctica had become trapped, and also needed rescuing and the saga only finally ended in January 1917.
Our brief and rather placid course has, unintentionally, woven around Shackleton’ s heroic track. A couple of weeks ago we visited Elephant Island which was as bleakly uninviting as anywhere I have seen. Camping for several months on the narrow strip of beach at the bottom of the massive cliffs did not appeal to any of us. Our crossing of the Scotia Sea was uneventful, but the seas were quite large enough to make the idea of being out on a small
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