Antarctica

by Gabrielle Walker

  There is not much you can do to escape a bad crossing, apart from avoid tempting the fates. Superstitious sailors, which is to say all sailors, will give you a list of things not to say or do. If the rim of a glass starts ringing, stop it immediately. Don’t whistle while on board, or you’ll ‘whistle up’ a storm. And—this one is nicely perverse—don’t wish anyone ‘good luck’ as it will assuredly bring bad luck down on you all.

  But if you are lucky, and the storms never come, you will experience instead one of the world’s loveliest ways to travel. As the long lazy waves fetch up from the Pacific you will feel hour upon hour of rolling swell, rocking you like a cradle, like a lullaby. Once in a while a larger wave might come along, making the ship judder slightly as if she had hit a bump in a road, before resuming her gentle swaying. And if you look outside, chances are that you’ll see the grey-white form of an albatross gliding serenely beside the ship.

  If you have one of these crossings you will be infused with a sense of perpetual well-being, and sleep deeply and dreamlessly, however thin your mattress or narrow your bunk.3

  At some point towards the end of the second day, you will begin to sense the impending ice. It might just be a chill creeping into the air. But if it’s foggy, or dark, or both, you will know there is ice out there when the captain switches on searchlights, and trains them like cannon on a point a few metres in front of the ship.

  The lights are for small chunks of ice that could still make a sizeable dent in the hull: bergy bits, or, worse still, growlers, which are almost completely submerged and are much harder to spot. They’re not for icebergs. By the time you saw a berg with the spotlights, you would be far too late to avoid it, and you’d also be in big trouble. They can be huge, these bergs, the size of a ship, the size of an island.

  Instead the crew must count on a radar screen whose arm sweeps periodically around revealing an array of glowing green blobs. It can be eerie up on the bridge, surrounded by mist, knowing there is ice out there and yet seeing nothing. The crew will be tense, and focused, their eyes flicking constantly between screens and lights. To be allowed to stay, it’s best to keep quiet; and above all, don’t get between the crew and their consoles.

  And then, if the day breaks and the fog lifts, you will see your first iceberg. It might be small, and irregular—a chewed-off chunk that has melted and fragmented almost all the way to oblivion. Or it might be vast, high and square, as if a granite cliff had floated into the sea. These tabular icebergs are an Antarctic speciality; they break off from the huge floating shelves of ice that rim the continent.

  This is all perfectly natural, and has been happening, to some extent, since the ice was born. However, as well as being the most human part of Antarctica, the Peninsula is also currently a place of change. There are many who suspect that this segment of Antarctica is behaving like a miner’s canary, feeling and responding to the trouble that may soon come for us all. Researchers and tourists alike are now flocking here: the former to find out exactly what is happening, and what it means for the rest of the world; the latter to witness this extraordinary wilderness before it changes for good.

  The first thing that strikes you when you reach the Peninsula is the overwhelming abundance of life. Compared to the rest of this remote and barren continent, the waters here are awash with living things. Chinstrap penguins in small, synchronised packs porpoise neatly past the ship’s bow, making barely a splash as they cut through air then water then air. There are rockhopper penguins, with absurd golden feathers that sprout like fascinators from either side of their heads. And gentoos, which look like Adélies apart from the white strip that runs over their heads and ends in a white blob next to each ear, as if they were wearing iPod headphones.

  Then there are the seals, of course, usually lolling motionless on passing icebergs, dark smears against the white: Weddells, and thuggish thickset leopard seals. Also crab eaters, slender and silver and bizarrely misnamed since they actually eat a smaller shrimplike crustacean called krill.

  You might also see humpback whales, and if the rest of the animals are jumpy that probably means that a pod of orcas will soon be cruising past, with their boastfully tall black dorsal fins, and beady mean-looking eyes. A more charming prospect is the minke whales, the second friendliest and most curious of all the whale species around here. They don’t just spout in the distance like the humpbacks; they come and play right by the ship.

  The friendliest of all the whales are the southern right whales, the golden retrievers of the cetacean world. They love human company, or, rather, they did, and this unfortunate tendency led them to be hunted nearly to extinction in the early part of the twentieth century. They are called ‘right’ whales because they were the ‘right’ ones to catch for oil and bones and profit. Though the population is recovering, you’d be lucky to spot one today.

  The relative accessibility of the Peninsula and its surrounding islands coupled with the abundant whales and seals that the earliest explorers found in its water mean it has the longest record of exploitation on the continent. The human touch here is at its most evident, and also at its most unedifying.

  In 1892 one American sealer, who had worked in Antarctica then for more than twenty years, told the US Congress:

  We killed everything, old and young, that we could get in gunshot of, excepting the black pups, whose skins were unmarketable, and most all of these died of starvation, having no means of sustenance . . . The seals in all these localities have been destroyed entirely by this indiscriminate killing of old and young, male and female. If the seals in these regions had been protected and only a certain number of‘dogs’ (young male seals unable to hold their positions on the beaches) allowed to be killed, these islands and coasts would be again populous with seal life. The seals would certainly not have decreased and would have produced an annual supply of skins for all times. As it is, however, seals in the Antarctic regions are practically extinct, and I have given up the business as unprofitable.4

  The whaling and sealing industries were akin to mining: go there, grab what you can and leave. The Antarctic Treaty now bans any commercial exploitation, but both whaling and sealing industries collapsed through their own short-sighted overuse of resources long before the international treaties kicked in.

  Now, the only permitted commercial activity is tourism and the Peninsula is by far the most visited region of Antarctica. Some visitors are on massive cruise ships that can’t fit into many of the ports, but most come on smaller vessels, with just a hundred passengers or so. These are called expeditions rather than cruises. They do not have casinos and tea dances. They are often converted research vessels and they bring people of all ages who have saved and dreamed and dared, and are looking for adventure.

  There are those who say that the tourism is dangerous for Antarctica, but the self-policed rules among tourist operators are at least as stringent as those on the scientific bases. None of the ships is allowed to discharge anything in the water below 60° south. Before being allowed off the ship, you are warned sternly about not approaching the wildlife, about washing off your boots before you go, about taking nothing with you and leaving nothing behind. It is a key part of the experience. Unlike the sealers and whalers, Antarctic tourist operators have too much sense to foul their own nest.

  Besides, who is to say that Antarctica belongs only to government-sponsored scientists? Some researchers have been known to grumble that the tourists get in the way of their studies and have no right to be there. The better-mannered ones are more prepared to share. One biologist even told me: ‘I sometimes feel that I’m a tourist here myself.’ And it’s true that in the gaps between their formal research, many of the continent’s scientists are just as likely to be staring in wonder at the continent’s wildlife or its historic sites.

  The most visited site on the continent is Port Lockroy, a refurbished British base showing what life used to be like there when it was last occupied, decades ago, with the short-wave radio still ch
attering against a background hiss in the comms room, and the kitchen and bunks carefully reconstructed to be exactly as they were. (It also has a modernised section bearing a gift shop and a post office.)

  Port Lockroy should cheer those who fear the effects of the rising tourist tide. The base shares its home with a colony of gentoo penguins. A few years ago one half of the penguin colony was roped off and kept undisturbed. In the other, people were left free to roam at will. After five years of study, researchers investigated the difference between the two halves of the colony, those disturbed and those left in peace. They were looking for signs of changed breeding patterns, poorer feeding, less success at raising a new generation. The result? There was no difference at all.

  The Peninsula also has a higher concentration of human habitations than anywhere else on the continent. It’s still not exactly crowded, but some of the most accessible parts are brimming with scientific bases built by countries looking for the easiest possible ticket into the Antarctic club. And perhaps because there are so many, so close, there is a sense here of countries jockeying for position: a tug-of-war between the instinctive cooperation that pervades the continent and the desire to stake a claim on the land.

  King George Island at the northernmost tip of the Peninsula is one of the first islands that you hit after crossing Drake Passage. This otherwise barren lump of volcanic rock has a host of stations sitting cheek by jowl, owned by Brazil, Ecuador, Argentina, Peru, Uruguay and Chile, as well as South Korea, Poland, China and Russia.

  I went there to see the Russian base, Bellingshausen, on board the Akademik Sergey Vavilov, as the guest of Peregrine Adventures.5 Though she was chartered as a tourist vessel, the ship was owned by the Russian Academy of Sciences and had a Russian crew. The previous season, the ship had carried the skeleton of a church to Bellingshausen. The church had since been built and dedicated and—having lived with its timbers and bells on the journey down—both sailing and expedition crews were curious to see how it had turned out.

  There are many places of worship scattered around Antarctica. Most bases have at least one room that can be used occasionally for whatever form of service the inhabitants care to propose. The larger, or more devout, ones have a building set aside for the purpose, though they are often makeshift, based around steel containers.

  The Russians had apparently decided on a different approach. Their church was a hymn to the sublime. We had already seen it from the ship. You couldn’t miss it. There it stood silhouetted on a prominent headland—a glorious onion-domed structure of Siberian larch and cedar, anchored to the rock by massive chains as if it would otherwise float upwards to the heavens. It was utterly strange even by the standards of this strange continent.

  The church also came with a full-time pastor. As our motorboat approached the shore, we picked out a messianic figure against the gloom. He was wearing a grey parka over a full-length black cassock; his beard was priestly in scope but red in colour; his arms were outstretched in grave greeting. This was Father Kallistrat, the continent’s first, and indeed only, Russian Orthodox priest. He was twenty-nine years old. He had come to this bare outpost ready to stay for months, perhaps years at a time, serving a flock that numbered barely twenty in the height of the summer.

  ‘It’s hard to find someone,’ he said as we started the hike up to his church. ‘A young man might not be strong enough. An old man might find it too hard. You couldn’t send a man who has a wife and children.’ And why had he agreed? ‘My bishop said “go”, so I came.’

  On a continent formally dedicated to science, in a base funded by the public purse where every person, every expenditure must be justified in triplicate, Father Kallistrat’s presence was already astonishing. But that was nothing compared to his church.

  It had been designed by Russia’s finest architects, and paid for by ice-inspired oligarchs. The trees that supplied its structure had been hand-selected by specialist woodcutters. The entire building was created in Russia before being dismantled and transported on the Vavilov. It had occupied most of the stern deck, both holds and half of the main deck. Father Kallistrat had set up his altar in the ship’s foyer. In full, gold-braided regalia he had conducted his services for hours with bells and candles and incense.

  The sky was growing gloomier and when we reached the top of the hill the light snow turned to sleet. But even in this bleak landscape the church was beautiful. It could almost have been an elegant log cabin but for the clock tower and those extraordinary onion domes. Up in the belfry a clanging tune started out. Someone’s head poked out of an upper window like a human cuckoo clock. Tourists and worshippers alike let out a ragged cheer.

  Inside the church was unexpectedly small. A few members of our crew were there, lighting candles with long bent tapers. The icons were exquisite, painted—Father Kallistrat whispered—by some of Russia’s greatest artists. I found myself lighting a candle of my own, and pushing some British pounds into the Russian collecting box. ‘Weird enough for you?’ grinned our expedition leader, David McGonigal, as I re-emerged.

  Down at the base, the station manager, Oleg Sakharov, was waiting for me. Oleg was in his late forties, handsome and brusque, betraying just a hint of irritation at the invasion. He looked at a tour member photographing a lone penguin on the shore and grimaced. ‘Tourists never want to come to the stations,’ he grumbled. ‘All they care about is wildlife, wildlife, wildlife.’ He’d been coming here for nine years, he told me; this time he would be here for eighteen months at a stretch. Yes, he had a family back in Russia. How did his wife and children deal with his long absences? He shrugged. ‘It’s my life.’

  And then he opened the door to the base. I followed and was immediately hit by the dismal smell of overcooked cabbage and a fug of stale cigarette smoke; the walls bore dull grey pictures, the lino was torn. We passed a room whose back wall contained metal shelves crammed with ancient octagonal film canisters, in dull green, brown or silver, with numbers roughly painted on the sides in white. This, Oleg told me, was the projector room where the base gathered to watch Russian films.

  So far, so predictable. But then we crossed into the next building and emerged into an unexpectedly lovely lounge, with picture windows framing an exquisite scene of rock, sea and snow. My attention, however, was diverted by the huge widescreen TV showing an actress in a Chilean soap opera, wringing her hands and scrunching her beautiful face over some trauma that I couldn’t follow.

  And not just a TV, but a state-of-the-art entertainment system. This had nothing at all to do with the grim Soviet style of the rest of the base. Oleg smiled at my confusion. He told me this had been a gift from the South Korean government. Now I was really astonished. The South Koreans were giving gifts to the Russians? I wouldn’t have thought these two countries were the most obvious bedfellows.

  It turned out that, a year earlier, five Koreans from one of the many nearby bases had gone missing in a storm. Their boat had capsized and they had had to swim through appalling seas to an abandoned shore. Russian scientists from Bellingshausen had risked their own lives to go out and find them. They had rescued four of the five Koreans and brought them home alive. (The fifth man had already died of exposure.) A thank-you note had subsequently arrived from the government in Seoul by ship, along with this entertainment system. ‘It was nice,’ said Oleg. ‘They said they were sorry they couldn’t send a bigger one.’

  So this was Antarctic cooperation in action again, national barriers melting under a common physical threat. I understood that. But I was still baffled by the church. Why go to so much trouble? Why build something so exquisite in such a place? Oleg sighed and trotted out what sounded like a standard response. ‘Many Russians have died here in Antarctica and this way we can be respectful to their memories.’

  Yes, I could see that. But why did it have to be so elaborate? The Chilean base next door had one that was much more the standard of Antarctic devotions. It was an old stainless steel container, painted bright blue, with a wo
oden cross on the door. If they wanted a church at Bellingshausen, why not make do and mend like everyone else?

  Oleg turned and looked me directly in the eye. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘you can close down a station, da? You can say “the economy is bad, the time is hard”. But you can’t close down a church.’ Ah yes. In the past five years, several of Russia’s stations had been mothballed through lack of funds. But a spectacular church like this one? No, you couldn’t close that. This seemed as cynical a form of imperialism as any other claim-staking on the continent.

  But maybe it wasn’t as cynical as it sounded. For while I was still digesting his first comment, Oleg hit me with a burst of pure romanticism that left me reeling. ‘And so' he said, ‘there will be a piece of Russia’s soul in Antarctica for ever.’

  Yes, indeed there would. A church sent from Russia, with love.

  If the Russians had found a spiritual way to stake their claim, the Argentinians and Chileans came up with something just as evocative—but perhaps more human. In November 1977, the Argentinian authorities airlifted Silvia Morella de Palma to their base Esperanza (‘Hope’) on the tip of the Peninsula. Silvia, who was the wife of the base’s army chief, was also seven months pregnant. On 7 January 1978 she gave birth to Emilio Marcos Palma, who is the only person in human history known to be the first born on any continent. And what better way to assert your ownership of a place than to have new citizens born there?

  Since then seven more babies have been born at Esperanza, and three at the Chilean base on King George Island, near Bellingshausen. (The Chileans saw what the Argentinians were doing and realised they might be missing a trick.) That makes eleven young men and women who can reasonably claim to be full citizens of Antarctica.