Retracing but a few of the steps Sir Ernest Shackleton and his men took on their perilous and lifesaving crossing of South Georgia is a poignant moment. To imagine what these men endured while crossing this frigid and unforgiving ice dominated landscape is entirely impossible. We can never truly understand the drive and motivation that enabled these men to endure the trek with not only their own survival at stake, but also the survival of the men left on the opposite shores of South Georgia and their men left back on Elephant Island. One can only suppose that a large part of Shackleton’s resilience came from his commitment to his men and their survival.
Witnessing and experiencing the final leg of this epic journey from Fortuna Bay to Stromness will be a highlight of the voyage for many of us and indeed a highlight of our travels in years to come. It being March we have experienced South Georgia on a forgiving and spectacularly sunny day. When Shackleton crossed in May 1916 the temperature would have been below freezing, not a pleasant 10 degrees C. The green mosses and grasses sweeping up from Stromness whaling station towards the waterfall would have been a vast snow field.
The men walked into the working whaling station looking every bit the tired and dishevelled adventurers they were. They looked so unkempt that Shackleton later wrote about the three children that ran screaming from them in terror. Today as we approached the whaling station it was the young fur seals that came to greet us. Some of them are still nursing; others hoping to find their mothers in the last few weeks of their nursing period before they are left to their own devices.
Fur seals have abounded at every site we have visited in South Georgia, and Grytviken this afternoon was no different. Unlike Stromness, which is an abandoned whaling station that is unsafe to tour around due to unstable buildings, Grytviken has been meticulously restored. Not only did we get a guided tour around the station with Mathew, a curator from the South Georgia Heritage Trust, we also got to visit the assiduously put together museum where all manner of artefacts and scientific specimens can be seen on display. And of course we could buy postcards and send them home from the on site post office!
To visit such two such historically significant sites in one day and be immersed in the stories of South Georgia’s past, while at the same time being surrounded by its immense wildlife and landscape, is an experience unique to South Georgia. Sailing thousands of miles across the Southern Ocean often seems like a big journey to take to visit a Sub Antarctic island. We make those big journeys for a reason and today those reasons shone.
