A Day to Remember! – ALEX
We headed for King Haakon Bay and made our way down the fjord in the warm sun, most of us standing outside in front of the wheelhouse looking down the fjord on this beautiful day. The wind was from the north and we were sheltered in the fjord. We dropped anchor right off a large rock outcropping at the end of the fjord covered in tussock with a small cave at it’s base along a dark pebbled beach that ran out to a flat wet plane of glacial till that had washed down from the two glaciers to the left at the end of the flanking mountains range. At the end of the fjord to the right was a glacier running into the water. The glacier in the center of these three was much more gradual in assent angle. It seemed obvious that is why Shackleton took this one a hundred and four years ago if it looked similar in angle in his time. It resembled more an ice ramp up to the mountain ridge, or spine of South Georgia than a traditional calving glacier that was at the end of the fjord.
This was the beach and spot that Shackleton ended is historic voyage In the James Caird and we were there!
Shackleton chose this center glacier and proceeded up and across the top to the right or east of the range between the two mountain peeks flanking the ridge and then descended down the opposite side of the range to the second valley below to the north into Stromness in thirty-six hours, a feat hard to match by professional climbers today. Had he gone more or less straight over the glacier he could have been in Prince Olof Harbor and helped in three or four hours but thought for some reason that the whaling station was not open at that moment. Above Stromness he heard the morning whistle and descended into the Valley and down the waterfall into the flat valley and made his way to reconnect with the world and get help for his men still stranded.
This beach landing was the completion of almost twenty years of following the Shackleton story, it was the last significant place to visit in this epic story to understand, as best as one could, the environments he and his men were dealing with, after having hiked to the waterfall from Stromness twelve years ago with my family and then visiting Elephant Island several years later with my father, the departure point of the James Caird.
Two more pieces to the puzzle remained. I, my wife, and daughter visited the James Caird in Dulwitch England outside of London at Shackleton’s boyhood school where she resides now surrounded by students and can be visited by appointment as we did several years ago, leaving the final piece, King Haakon Bay, remaining. Today I was able to walk the beach where she landed along the southern coast of South Georgia, where her crew of six landed over a century ago. This was amazing, especially after traveling down the rarely traveled southern coast of South Georgia. It was also a special moment considering this was not in my planning since, the real reason to be in South Georgia was the Archeological expedition and its work.
I walked up the scree field of the mountain range to the right, then down across the glacial till out wash basin that was huge, level and wet and made of fine material, l then circled back down the length of the beach back to the ship. An outcropping and cave were at the end of the beach, where a fresh water stream ran next to the outcropping and the three men who remained behind with the James Caird waited for the “boss”. They were hopeful for his return as were the men stranded on Elephant Island back in Antarctica. A whale catcher was sent around the island within the week and collected the three in King Haakon bay on this beach, but it took another four months to rescue the rest of the crew stranded on Elephant Island.
What a cool day to have come full circle for me added with the fact we will be seeing Shackleton’s grave in about a week.
Thank you Laure ,Fede and Bob Burton for this unexpected surprise!
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