  |
 |
  |
|
South Georgia Island is isolated from the civilized world and trapped in the most cruel of climates, but it was destined for discovery. From its first recorded sightings more than 300 years ago until the 20th century, this icy paradise in the Southern Ocean has attracted explorers, merchants and governments. London-born merchant Antoine de la Roche may
have been the first person to sight South Georgia Island or any of its
Sub-Antarctic counterparts. In April 1675, as he was sailing from Lima
to England, his ship was blown south as it rounded Cape Horn. He and
his crew reported seeing ice-covered mountains. Some historians, particularly those supporting Argentina's claim to ownership of South Georgia, believe that de la Roche was wrong, and that he had in fact sighted Beauchene Island, 800 miles further west. This is unlikely, as Beauchene Island does not possess the high mountains or bays referred to in Roche's account. Those historians contend that a Spanish treasure ship, the Leon, first discovered South Georgia in 1756 while heading east on a voyage commissioned by the French company Sieur Duclos, of St. Malo. Sailing from Lima to Cadiz, the Leon was blown far off course after rounding Cape Horn. The Leon crew first sighted the island on the morning of June 29. The feast day of St. Peter is July 1, so they named the island after the saint. Some Spanish and Argentine publications refer to the island as Isla de San Pedro in preference to the English name. Captain Cook's Icy Reception
Despite claiming South Georgia for Britain, Cook saw little potential for the island and the area south of it. If any explorer pushed further south than Cook, "I shall not envy him the fame of his discovery," he wrote, "but I make bold to declare that the world will derive no benefit from it." Cook's accounts of fur seals in the region, however,
piqued the interest of sealers from the United States and Britain at
a time when seal numbers were dropping in the Northern Hemisphere. The
next few decades saw many such commercial voyages heading south to the
area. In 1877, an Austrian visitor to South Georgia,
Heinrich Klutschak, made observations that he later published. He was
followed in 1882 by a group of German scientists who lived for a year
at Royal Bay. They made extensive records of South Georgia's geology,
biology, meteorology and topography, and prepared detailed maps of part
of the hinterland around Royal Bay. This was the first major attempt
to define the island's natural characteristics. Island For Rent Kerr passed the request to the Colonial Office
with the comment that his administration knew very little about the
place other than that it was "covered in snow to great depths, surrounded
by icebergs and fringed with glaciers." Kerr saw no objection to renting
the entire island to Captain Inglis for a nominal fee if he really did
wish to graze his sheep there. The captain, however, lost interest in
the project before London ever replied. Fifteen years later, a scientific party arrived, this time from Sweden. The country had mounted an expedition to explore the Antarctic Peninsula, and in 1902 some of the Swedes paid a winter visit to Cumberland East Bay and made a mapping and geological survey. Commanding their ship was a Norwegian, Captain Carl Anton Larsen, a man experienced with whaling in Arctic waters. Larsen subsequently lost his ship in the Weddell
Sea and was rescued by an Argentine warship, but his short time on South
Georgia had sown the seeds of a plan to introduce whaling to the Antarctic.
By 1904, the first land-based whaling station at South Georgia was set up in Grytviken. Whaling became a major activity at the island -- from 1904 to 1965, about 175,250 whales were processed there.
Shackleton left most of his crew there and set sail in an open boat for about 800 miles across the appalling conditions of the Southern Ocean. This was among the most epic small boat journeys of all time. The men landed at King Haakon Bay on the uninhabited south coast of South Georgia, and Shackleton and two others trekked across the then-unmapped glaciers and mountains of the island to Stromness -- the first crossing of this rugged island. Shackleton's first contact with the outside world for 17 months was when he heard the steam whistle of the whaling factory at Stromness on May 20, 1916. His arrival at the whaling station caused some concern, so bedraggled was his appearance, but he was eventually recognized by the manager of the whaling station. Shackleton later went on to rescue the men who had been left at King Haakon Bay and Elephant Island. Amazingly, not a single man was lost on the expedition. The scale of Shackleton's achievement was recognized
in 1964 when the well-equipped Combined Services Expedition had great
difficulties and nearly lost three men in an avalanche, despite starting
fresh and having plenty of food and modern equipment. In 1920, the British Colonial Office, aware that whale stocks needed to be conserved, imposed a tax on whale oil. With money from whale oil taxes, the Discovery Investigations (1925-1939) were financed and based at South Georgia. The Discovery Investigations comprised 13 voyages, which gathered information about Antarctic and Sub-Antarctic islands, and made important advances in biology of the oceans and charts of the regions. Back to top In 1943, the British Antarctic Survey began as a wartime naval operation. It was transferred to the British Colonial Office in 1945 and called the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey until 1962. In 1949-50, the organization established a new base at King Edward Point on South Georgia's northeastern coast. This station assumed responsibility for meteorological observations. Today, the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) is responsible
for nearly all the British government's scientific research in South
Georgia. Sources for this report include the following: The Island of South Georgia, Bob Headland, Cambridge University Press Department of Overseas Surveys, Map 610 Polar Record, Various, Scott Polar Research Institute The Explorations of Antarctica, Fogg & Smith, Cassell Life in the Freezer, Alastair Fothergill, BBC Books Antarctica, the Last Frontier, Laws, Boxtree/Anglia British Exploration of Antarctica, British Antarctic Survey
Home
| Ice and Isolation | Island Insights | Related
Links | Trivia Challenge
|
Cook's
account described his first cautious approach to the coast: "the head
of the bay ... was terminated by a huge mass of snow and ice of vast extent
... just like the side or face of an ice isle ... pieces were continually
breaking from them and floating out to sea. A great fall happened while
we were in the bay: it made a noise like a cannon. Not a tree or shrub
to be seen, not even big enough to make a toothpick. I landed in three
different places, displayed our Colours and took possession of the Country
in His Majesty's name under a discharge of small arms."
One
visit of note, though not scientific, was that of Sir Ernest Shackleton
and the crew of the whaleboat James Caird. Shackleton had sailed
for the Antarctic on the Endurance and stayed a month at Grytviken
on South Georgia before making the final leg of the journey in December
1914 to the Weddell Sea. There, the Endurance was trapped and destroyed
in the pack ice, and Shackleton and his men trekked and hauled their whaleboat
across the ice before eventually reaching Elephant Island.
To
study South Georgia, Captain R.F. Scott's Discovery was fitted
out and sent south from Canada, where the vessel had been on duty as a
store ship for the Hudson Bay Company. The Discovery was joined
by the William Scoresby, and during an epic five-and-a-half day
cruise in bad weather around South Georgia, they took 370 water samples
and 307 plankton net hauls. Scientists worked nonstop on studies of the
krill and whale populations. Accurate charts subsequently were made of
South Georgia, the South Orkney and South Shetland Islands.
In
1962-63, a large hospital and residential building, Shackleton House,
was built at King Edward Point, but today there are no scientists working
at the station: All are located in field camps or at Bird Island, to the
extreme north.