Paulet Island
Calm waters, clear sunny skies and gleaming white breasts of thousands of Adelie penguins. Paulet island must have looked somewhat less inviting to Captain Larsen and his 22 men as they prepared to overwinter there in February 1903 after losing their ship to the wild waters of Antarctic Sound. The reality was that their only resources were the rocks and penguins of Paulet Island in this barren, ice-cloaked, nether part of the world.
How one's perspective changes in the absence of the essentials of life, let alone the luxury of a floating five star hotel!! Larsen and his men looked to the Adelies as their sole source of food and fuel and proceeded to harvest 1100 penguins to carry them through the long, approaching winter. Penguin soup and steaks cooked over a penguin fueled fire sustained the unhappy stranded men through the bitter dark months of the Austral 1903 winter.
Walking around the remains of their stone shelter we see that man’s footprint is very small indeed. The ancestors of the food and fuel, which saved our early human visitors, continue in their penguin manner to observe the same rituals that have perpetuated their species for millennia. Our visit, a speck in time, passes unnoticed in this vast and silent world of ice, stones and feathered life.
Calm waters, clear sunny skies and gleaming white breasts of thousands of Adelie penguins. Paulet island must have looked somewhat less inviting to Captain Larsen and his 22 men as they prepared to overwinter there in February 1903 after losing their ship to the wild waters of Antarctic Sound. The reality was that their only resources were the rocks and penguins of Paulet Island in this barren, ice-cloaked, nether part of the world.
How one's perspective changes in the absence of the essentials of life, let alone the luxury of a floating five star hotel!! Larsen and his men looked to the Adelies as their sole source of food and fuel and proceeded to harvest 1100 penguins to carry them through the long, approaching winter. Penguin soup and steaks cooked over a penguin fueled fire sustained the unhappy stranded men through the bitter dark months of the Austral 1903 winter.
Walking around the remains of their stone shelter we see that man’s footprint is very small indeed. The ancestors of the food and fuel, which saved our early human visitors, continue in their penguin manner to observe the same rituals that have perpetuated their species for millennia. Our visit, a speck in time, passes unnoticed in this vast and silent world of ice, stones and feathered life.
