May 12 2008 
May 12 2008
Shot of Elephant Island on the horizon (photo by Dann Blackwood).
Shot of Elephant Island on the horizon (photo by Dann Blackwood).
Marshall and John Swartz making the final adjustments to Towcam, before deploying it off Elephant Island.
Marine Project Coordinator, Jenny White, launching Towcam (photo by Dann Blackwood).
More feathered friends around the ship at the moment.
More feathered friends around the ship at the moment.
Today, we saw our second sighting of land since we left Chile over three weeks ago. Through the gloom of a foggy Southern Ocean morning, we looked out from the bridge to see the first hints of the darkness on the horizon that signified we were approaching Elephant Island. Then, as the sun burnt off the haze and the ship cruised closer, the mountains and glaciers became discernible, with their peaks cut off by the clouds. Only at one point did I see one of the snow capped peaks jut above the clouds for a few minutes.
I was humbled to realize that the three day, 800 mile journey we have just made from South Georgia to Elephant Island, in our comfortable, modern ship, is the same journey (albeit done in reverse) to that made by Shackleton and some of his men in a small open rowing boat at the beginning of the twentieth century. How they had the strength of body and mind to complete such a passage is something I could never understand.
Ernest Shackleton, a British explorer, led a group of men on an expedition to Antarctica in 1914. Their ship, the Endurance, became lodged in sea-ice and, as the conditions deteriorated, they were forced to abandon ship and set up camp on the pack ice in the Weddell Sea, due south of where the Nathaniel Palmer is today. The men left the ice and made for Elephant Island, where most of them had to endure months on end with only the equipment and supplies they could carry. In 1916, after being camped out for a short time on Elephant Island, Shackleton and five of his men made for South Georgia in a small open rowing boat (the James Caird) to try and get help, leaving the other 22 of his men (with Frank Wild his second in command in charge – and whom “Point Wild”, the beach where they camped, is named after) to camp and survive on Elephant Island for what turned out to be 4 months. After arriving on South Georgia, Shackleton and men then crossed the island on foot, a notoriously difficult climbing route, and arrived at a Russian whaling station in time to alert rescue parties.> When four months later Shackleton arrived back at Elephant Island to pick up his men, he found all alive, an amazing feat considering they spent a total of 22 months stranded in the Antarctic.
And so, as I look out on the peaks of land in the distance and bundle up tight in my Extreme Cold Weather gear issue jacket, I can’t help but remember those men and their fight to stay alive. And then I head downstairs back to my laboratory to check my e-mail...
Kate Hendry