Thursday, February 18, 2010

Shackelton's rescue



We went out again today, and saw the place where the crew on the Shackelton Expedition stayed in the winter of 1916. The expedition was stranded in pack ice from January to October, 1915, when their ship was crushed by ice. They hauled and then rowed life boats across the ice flow to Elephant Island where Shackelton and four others left the party in April, 1916, and rowed 800 miles during winter in the world’s worst seas to the island of South Georgia. After several failed rescue attempts, Shackelton and a Chilean sea captain rescued the men in August, 1916. The monument in the picture was erected by the Chileans to honor the rescuing captain. Some of the Brits on board seem put out that there is no monument to Sir Shackelton.
As an added bonus this pm, the glacier calved; we saw two leopard seals, and penguins jumping four feet out of the water onto wet rocks to escape the seal.

PICTURE




We have at least one pic thanks to Mozilla Firefox.

Elephant Island

We landed at Elephant Island, a place Sir Ernest Shackelton’s men landed and stayed the winter while a few men sailed to Georgia and returned to save the rest of the crew. We saw Gentoo, Chinstrap, and Macaroni penguins, fur and elephant seals, and petrals. We also saw a Right whale, a relatively rare species. Yesterday, we could not download a picture – we’ll try again today. The landscapes are beyond description ; everything is surreal.

Yuuck! No pictures again.