With our adventures in the Falkland Islands behind us like our wake, the National Geographic Explorer pushes onward for the island of South Georgia. All on board the ship ease into the pace of a life at sea. It is a perfect time to reflect, to edit photography, to catch up with fellow shipmates, and perhaps to even find a moment for a nap. Throughout the day, presentations expanded our knowledge of this unique area we are exploring on this expedition. 

Through time and memorial mankind has always been drawn to the sea. Life began in the sea. The majority of our planet is covered by saltwater. Billions of people live in and around the sea. And it runs in our very blood. 

A day at sea is to be savored. Traveling at 14 knots, naturally one’s pace slows to the rhythm of the sea. 

The Sea - Barry Cornwall (1787 – 1874) 



THE SEA! The sea! The open sea!

The blue, the fresh, the ever free!

Without a mark, without a bound,

It runneth the Earth’s wide regions round;

It plays with the clouds; it mocks the skies;

Or like a cradled creature lies. 

I’m on the sea! I’m on the sea!

I am where I would ever be;

With the blue above, and the blue below,

And silence wheresoe’er I go;

If a storm should come and awake the deep,

What matter? I shall ride and sleep. 

I love, O, how I love to ride

On the fierce, foaming, bursting tide,

When every mad wave drowns the moon

Or whistles aloft his tempest tune,

And tells how goeth the world below,

And why the Sou’west blasts do blow. 

I never was on the dull, tame shore,

But I lov’d the great sea more and more,

And backwards flew to her billowy breast,

Like a bird that seeketh its mother’s nest;

And a mother she was, and is, to me;

For I was born on the open sea! 

The waves were white, and red the morn,

In the noisy hour when I was born;

And the whale it whistled, the porpoise roll’d,

And the dolphins bared their backs of gold;

And never was heard such an outcry wild,

As welcom’d to life the ocean-child! 

I’ve liv’d since then, in calm and strife,

Full fifty summers, a sailor’s life,

With wealth to spend and a power to range,

But never have sought nor sighed for change;

And Death, whenever he comes to me,

Shall come on the wild, unbounded sea!