Polar Voyages

by Gray, Gordon

  The next few days are spent visiting the fantastic wildlife of South Georgia. We visit the colonies of millions of king penguins, small colonies of sea lions and all of their attendant smells. There really is nothing quite like the awful smell that comes from a colony of sea lions. Penguins are bad, but sea lions are worse! At the King Penguin colony we see a curious sight. A leopard seal has come ashore and is lying by the water’s edge. Normally, a leopard seal would swim along the beach by the penguin colony and attack any passing penguins. The king penguins in their manner of haughty, but interested gentlemen, waddle up to about 5 feet from the leopard seal and stand for a few minutes staring at it and examining it closely. The seal just lies there unconcerned. Yet once in the water they would have swum as far away from it as they could. We visit a wandering albatross colony; where the nests are actually 2- or 3-feet high mounds of earth and grasses and are scattered over an open tussock grass-covered hilltop where the wind blows continually. The birds must have this wind to help them get airborne. They are huge birds. Close up I would think they are at least twice as big as the sooty albatross. Their heads are about 18 inches long and somehow they manage to fold their huge wings up so they become part of their backs. Like the seals, they are content to let us walk up and take their photos and they just watch us in an ‘interested but I don’t care’ sort of a way.

  We leave the magic of South Georgia and head further south towards the South Orkney Islands. We see the first iceberg at 57 degrees south. It is quite an impressive one too; on a grey cloudy day the iceberg is a silver gray colour with sides looking like sliced ice cream, a sculptured mass drifting along on its own in an empty ocean. Now we really are in the Antarctic!

  Antarctica

  The next morning we reach the South Orkneys, a beautiful string of small islands lying to the north of the Weddell Sea. In spite of a hazy sun the sight is spectacular, all gleaming whites, greys and blacks. The black mountains, grey mists and shadows, white icebergs and floes, and black sea all around us. As the icy sun breaks through gaps in the haze, the scene changes and different parts of the scene are highlighted in the bright sun while others vanish into the haze or behind a drifting berg.

  On Coronation Island there is a large colony of Adelie penguins. These are small penguins with cute faces and round, white-ringed eyes. They clamber up and struggle over the big lumps of drift ice at the water’s edge. They slip, slide and fall but always bounce up again and clamber back up the ice before they stand at the water’s edge and look carefully out to sea for any leopard seals and waiting for on e of their braver relatives to jump in first. If he swims away without being attacked by a leopard seal then the others will happily follow. How on earth do they decide who will go first? They are all totally unafraid of humans and walk right up to within a couple of feet of people on the shore peering intently at these new strangers on their beach.

  We leave the South Orkneys, heading further south, down into the Weddell Sea and for Paulet Island. The sky clears and the sun comes fully out and we see a spectacle of huge tabular icebergs lying in a flat blue sea. Most of them seem to have grounded as the sea starts to shallow near the islands. These bergs are massive with flat tops and vertical cliff sides. Some are tilted and lie there like a slice of ice cream cake on its side. It is hard to estimate just how big they are but certainly twice as high as the ship and at least half a mile long. They continue below the sea for at least four or five times as far as they do above the sea. The icebergs stretch away as far as we can see. We leave this rare and beautiful scene and turn in as it is now about midnight.

  Into the Pack Ice

  During the night I become aware of occasional faint scraping noises running through the ship. I listen, ice! We must have reached the edge of the pack ice. By four o’clock in the morning the noise has increased to a juddering and scraping clearly coming from the hull. Then it falls quiet and the engine vibration drops quietly away. I get up and go on deck to find that the ship is stopped in the middle of the pack ice. It is overcast and snowing with the visibility down to about 2 miles. The pack ice extends as far as I can see on all sides. The ship tries to move ahead again, pushing the floes aside with her ice-strengthened bow. There are no visible leads or areas of open water and the floes have closed right up against each other. At six o’clock the ship finally comes to a stop. Silence falls over the ship and the peace and beauty of the pack embraces us. Off to port, a large iceberg with big floes round about it lies trapped in the pack. Some of the floes around the ship are over 10 feet high and the pack has ridges running through it, some extending quite close to the ship. The ship had been trying to follow leads through the ice but these kept closing up, leaving her stuck with nowhere to go. The ship tries to get under way again at about seven o’clock, but with the floes like solid concrete blocks floating at the side of the ship and extending down about 10 or 12 feet into the water, this is impossible.

  Lars-Eric comes on the PA. ‘As those of you that have looked out can see we are stuck in the pack ice. I have spoken with the captain and we cannot get to Paulet Island so we must go back and find a way out of here. When the pack ice is this dense it is termed 9/10th pack and is impenetrable for anything other than an icebreaker. Also, the wind is from the north and if we stay here we could be in real danger of becoming trapped in the pack and with a large berg to leeward, this is not a good place to be.’ Not the most encouraging wake-up call, but true!

  The captain tries to manoeuvre the ship round but there is a real danger that one of the ice chunks will damage or even break the propeller. If that happens we could be here for a while. Gradually, by going ahead and astern and trying to turn the ship he eases her round and we start to back track through the ice that we have already passed through. Slowly, we head back to the north. Then, as we get into more broken pack ice, the swell increases telling us that we are now near to the ice edge, so we start to turn to the west.

  Iceberg Alley

  Paulet Island is a tiny island to the south of Joinville Island and Dundee Island on the north-eastern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. Our approach from the north-east had failed. So now we make for the northern end of Joinville Island with the hope of passing round its northern and western edges and then south through the Antarctic Sound from the north and reaching Paulet Island and its large Adelie penguin colony that way.

  Just one of many tabular icebergs in the Antarctic Strait, or Iceberg Alley.

  When we arrive at the sound at five the next morning the weather is still poor. It is foggy, snowing and there are icebergs everywhere. The sound is known as ‘Iceberg Alley’ by those that know. We finally get through but only as far as Hope Bay on the mainland. Here, there is an Argentinean Research station, and as the fog clears, there before us is the mainland of Antarctica, a mass of ice, snow and mountains in the sunshine. We are looking at a continent the size of North America with less than a couple of hundred inhabitants, most of whom are only there for the summer anyway. This is the last continent. This is what we have come to see and to set foot on.

  Any hope of landing at Hope Bay is now dashed by the wind. A 40-knot gale rises up and the sea is soon a mass of white horses. The wind pushes the loose pack ice against the only shore that it might have been possible to get to in a Zodiac. So, after our voyage to this wonderful continent, the chance of a landing here is taken from us. We must try another place, another time. The ship again slowly turns and we head back up the Antarctic Sound passing close to some of a large number of huge tabular bergs, all of which have broken off the Larsen Ice Shelf, as they always do every year.

  The plan to reach Paulet Island is now dropped and we steam across the Brantsfield Strait to Half Moon Island in the South Shetlands group. Half Moon is a small, low, rocky, crescent-shaped island with a sheltered shingle beach. Behind it, the high snow-covered mountains of Livingstone Island provide a magnificent backdrop. Half Moon is home to a small colony of chinstrap penguins, so named because they have a black chinstrap marking r
unning from their black caps under their white chins and beaks. They are small birds and some were struggling up the ice at the back of the beach while others were tobogganing down to the beach.

  Sketch map showing the Antarctic Peninsula and the places visited.

  A cheeky chinstrap penguin takes a close interest in a bright-red coated seal.

  To watch them from their low level and to be more comfortable I lie down on the beach behind the ice edge and wait. After a minute or so, one of them stops on his way to the sea. He has spotted me. He leaves his pals and sets off towards me in a very businesslike manner. He gets to about 10 feet and then stops; peers at me from top to toe then he moves closer. He gets to about 3 or 4 feet away and stops again. What is he going to do? He peers even harder at me and I am sure that he is going to give me a peck to see if I will do anything. He then obviously decides that I am just a boring, bright-red seal and not of much interest, so he turns on his heel and marches back to his pals with his report.

  At Last, the Mainland

  We sail for Paradise Bay in Graham Land on the Antarctic Peninsula and arrive there at eight o’clock the next morning in the middle of a blizzard. It is supposed to be one of the most beautiful spots on the coast but due to the weather we see nothing of it. We go ashore and at last set foot on the mainland of Antarctica. This is a real thrill. Even in the snow and cloud it is a special and spectacular place as the Antarctic ice cap reaches down to the sea. High, vertical, forbidding white cliffs of ice and snow hang silently above the bay; their tops invisible in the drifting cloud and making them seem even more threatening. Bergy bits and small growlers sit in the waters off the beach and the only movement is from a few Gentoo penguins scuttling about the shoreline. The scene has not changed in thousands and perhaps millions of years; yet like all of Antarctica it is only in the last 100 years that man has known about it and only in the last twenty years that people have been able visit and to marvel at its fantastic isolation and beauty. The ice ridges from the main ice cap come down to the water’s edge, leaving only a few feet of tide-cleared shingle beach to walk on. We walk round the small bay as far as we can and paddle in our boots in the crystal clear sea by a large grounded bergy bit.

  A brochure from Lindblad Explorer, the first expedition cruise ship. (J&C McCutcheon Collection)

  Marco Polo at Port Lockroy being watched by a gentoo penguin.

  Sketch map of the Neumayer Channel and the route taken.

  Sketch map showing the Le Maire Channel and Booth Island.

  Our voyage continues down the Neumayer Channel, a narrow channel running between Anvers Island and Wiencke Island, where we spot three large humpback whales swimming south and further down the channel we see some smaller minke whales. Both are baleen whales that feed by draining krill through the baleen strips that hang from the top of their mouths. Both species are endangered but the humpback is more endangered as there are fewer of them than the minke whales. After a scenic sail down the Neumayer Channel, with its ice-clad mountainsides, we arrive off Port Lockroy on Wiencke Island, the site of a former UK base. The scenery in the islands is stunning. White mountains, with the sun playing hide and seek through the swirling clouds, the constantly changing light highlighting a different area of mountain and ice then casting it into grey, blue shadow. It is so still now, there is not a breath of wind and the sea is like a piece of wet, grey slate. Once ashore, the sun breaks through to reveal even more spectacular mountains, many of which have not even been named let alone been climbed.

  Marco Polo enters a misty and gloomy Le Maire Channel.

  The following day, we pass through the spectacular Lemaire Channel between Booth Island and the mainland. It is shorter, but narrower, than the Neumayer and often choked with ice so we are lucky that it is clear for us. The black, snow-scattered, near-vertical mountain sides rise straight out of the sea on both sides of the ship and vanish into the mists above. The engine noise of the ship echoes back off the rock walls as we slide slowly through the still, black waters.

  Drake’s Passage and Cape Horn

  We exit the strait and enter the Bellinghausen Sea. After reaching 65 degrees 12 minutes south, we turn north and head for the Drake Passage and Cape Horn 600 miles away. It is Christmas Eve and, as we turn towards the north, the fog descends and Antarctica rapidly vanishes into the mist. After a short while it might not have been there at all. It is easy to understand how early explorers failed to find it for so long. My lasting feelings were that I must go back again and I still plan to one day.

  ‘This bacon is not crispy!’ Clearly others on board had other things to worry about! When we went down for lunch we found ourselves sitting near to two middle-aged English ladies who we had seen about the ship. They never seemed to be too happy about life. Today, they were both arguing with the waiter about their club sandwiches. ‘It is not properly toasted. The crispy bacon in it was not crisp and there was too little dressing on the salad. This really is not acceptable.’ Here we are in Antarctica, at the southern end of the Drake Passage on Christmas Eve with a storm forecast, and their major interest was the bacon in their sandwich.

  On Christmas Day, the westerly wind rises again and the sea starts to get up. The ship is due to be off Cape Horn at about four o’clock this afternoon. However, with the wind and weather deteriorating, there is a concern that we will not see the Horn. By early afternoon, a big beam sea is making the ship roll and waves are starting to come over the bow. The spray lashes across the upper decks and rattles on the windows. The upper decks are soon put out of bounds. At about a 3.45 p.m., disregarding the out-of-bounds warning, people start to go out on deck to try and see if we can see the Horn. Ahead of the ship all we can see is a grey murk. Suddenly, a woman in a yellow parka points excitedly out to starboard and we follow her arm. There, off the starboard bow, emerging from the cloud, is the instantly recognisable dark shape of Cape Horn. A hunched mass of rock, its sharp, pointed peak and sheer southern face point defiantly to the south. The wind continues to rise, up to 40 knots with the seas getting up to 20 or 25 feet high. It is a brilliant sight, to actually be here seeing something that you have only ever read of in clipper ship histories or lone yachtsmen’s journals. Now we are there seeing it with our own eyes. The sun breaks through and, in spite of the spray and the howling wind, it shines on the Horn itself. This legendary lump of rock that has been written about by many but seen by few is the last piece of land at the tip of South America. So many sailing ships have been wrecked and sailors’ lives lost at its feet and on the islands close by, while trying to sail round it. Most of them are unrecorded, ships that were just posted ‘Missing’. Of those that did get round it, either after the long run from Australia, or going the other way, to windward, coming from Europe and going up to Chile and the west coast of America, most never even saw the Horn. Either they were too far south or the Horn was lost in clouds or darkness. Some of those ships that tried to sail round it to the west spent literally weeks tacking to and fro across the Drake Passage trying to edge past the Horn. Some gave up and turned round then sailed eastwards downwind all the way to the west coast of America via the Indian Ocean and past Australia, just to save the ships from the pounding that the seas off the Horn could give them.

  Cape Horn emerges through the murk, the graveyard of many ships and sailors.

  The Marco Polo holds her course heading north-west as if she is carrying on in to the Pacific Ocean. When she is about 3 or 4 miles west of the Horn she turns to the east, down wind and sea and steams past Cape Horn. We sail ‘Round the Horn’ on Christmas Day. In the traditional maritime sense of the old wind jammers, we have not sailed ‘Round the Horn’. The Horn lies at exactly 56 degrees south and in the days of sail to claim that the ship had sailed ‘Round the Horn’ she must sail from 50 degrees south in one ocean round to 50 degrees south in the other. However, we have sailed ‘past’ Cape Horn. Once we are clear and the fearsome Horn falls astern we go below, back into the warmth for some Christmas ‘cheer
’ and a piece of Christmas stollen cake; something that the sailors on the wind jammers would not have been able to do.

  Once past Horn Island the ship turns north and heads for Ushuaia at the eastern end of the Beagle Channel. The ship is soon in the lee of the islands that are the last remnants of the southern tips of the Andes as they disappear beneath the Drake Passage before they re-emerge as the Antarctic Peninsula. Once in their lee, the sea calms down considerably and the wind drops away. We even managed a short stroll on deck before the formal Christmas gala dinner. What a day!

  Beagle Channel

  The final leg of the voyage was up the Beagle Channel and out into the Pacific Ocean then back into the Cockburn Channel before turning into the Straits of Magellan. This whole area is spectacular, with pointed high mountains, glaciers and natural forests. We had a fantastic, calm, sunny day for our trip through the Beagle Channel, which, so we were told, is highly unusual. The guides kept saying ‘This weather never happens. It is always cloudy, very windy and wet here.’ The Beagle Channel, named by Charles Darwin after his ship, seemed to go on forever, with hundreds of islands and rocks along the way. Navigation must be difficult but thankfully the water is deep. So we found our way into the Cockburn Channel and then into the wide expanse of the Straits of Magellan. The mountains had gone and the landscape was flat and agricultural with just low hills in the distance. The Strait was wide and we could not see the other side.

  Marco Polo at Punta Arenas showing off her lost paint caused by the storm in the Southern Ocean.

  Throughout the voyage, Lars-Eric Lindblad kept us fully up to the minute with his chats from the bridge, telling us what was, or was not, happening and why we were going to do whatever it was. He was a wonderful man and so enthusiastic about everything. His enthusiasm was contagious and his love for and concerns over Antarctica were very evident. He was determined that Antarctica must remain a pristine reserve and must not be damaged in anyway by tourists, industries or others and, equally, he knew that only by taking people to Antarctica will the general public develop strong feelings for the preservation of the continent. He was, I am sure, always trying to get Captain Eric, from Norway, to take the ship into places that the captain would rather not go but between them they made sure that we always did something memorable and exciting, and we did get to most of the places that Lars-Eric had hoped to take us. The lectures on board all carried this message throughout the voyage as well as providing masses of information about this fantastic continent, such as details of its geological history as well as its exploration and its wildlife. Every day we seemed to learn something new about penguins, seals, whales or albatrosses. Lars-Eric was a true champion for the Antarctic with his ‘Leave only footprints and take only memories’ motto. It is thanks to him that the controls governing visiting ships and how people behave ashore were put into place. Lars-Eric sadly died in 1994.