Saturday, December 19, 2009
We did a morning landing at Jason Harbor where there was a small shack built in the early 20th Century as a emergency refuge for stranded whalers and other travelers. It also is a great beach for fur seals, elephant seals and king and gentoo penguins.
A young elephant seal promptly adopted our landing party, inching over to lay on the legs of anyone who sat on the beach long enough.
At midday, we repositioned the Clelia II to Grytviken, one of the busiest whaling stations in its heyday in the world. It was founded in 1902 and finally shut down in the 1960s. On my first visit here more than 20 years ago, you could stand on the flensing dock and still smell the rancid whale oil impregnated in the timbers.
Now many of the station’s docks and buildings have rotten and been cleared away for safety’s sake. A small foundation dedicated to preserving the heritage of the site maintains the remaining structures and even has a small gift shop to take in revenue to support the operation.
We landed near the little cemetery containing Sir Ernest’s grave, brought out the scotch and orange juice for a toast to “The Boss” (his moniker given him by his admiring men, long before Springsteen, I might add). Trevor, one of our expedition staff from Scotland, gave a reading from one of The Boss’s journals.
We took the rest of the afternoon to poke around the station and photograph more of the seals round the beach, including one endearing little fur seal pup who nosed around several of us, hoping one of us was its mum. The Petrel, one of the original whaling chase craft was still in its last resting place, harpoon still afixed to the bow, never to be fired again. It had been sabotaged at the dock just before my first visit by some anti-whaling activists.
Our evening departure from this historic and stunningly beautiful island was graced by one of the most vivid, weird sunsets I’ve ever seen. Enormous lenticular clouds brought about by the interaction of the upper level storm winds and the island’s mountain range produced fantastic shapes reminiscent of a Steven Spielberg movie.
Next: the South Orkney Islands (coming soon — we’re on our way!)
