Port Lockroy
Early this morning we entered the Neumayer Channel, then turned and threaded through the very narrow Peltier Channel, between Doumer and Weincke islands. This passage deposited our ship in the sheltered harbour at Port Lockroy, home of the earliest British station in the region. Built during the Second World War in 1944, Base A was intended to monitor enemy shipping in the area. After the war the station became a jumping-off spot for expeditions surveying and mapping the region for the next 20 years. Abandoned in the early 1960’s, Base A quickly fell into disrepair and was nearly a wreck by the 1980’s. However, with the timely intervention of current base leader Rick Atkinson and several colleagues, and the backing of British Antarctic Survey and the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust, the modest building was restored and now serves as a museum and heritage center. Passing a rack of dogsleds and innumerable nesting Gentoo penguins, upon entering the ‘hut’ one is instantly transported back to the Antarctica of the 1950’s – men living simply in the wilderness, dependent not on technology but rather their own resourcefulness and practicality.
After weighing anchor, we sailed north through the Neumayer channel and into the Gerlache Strait. Many of us spent the afternoon just sitting and staring at the stunning panorama of the mountains of Brabant Island on the port side and the Antarctic peninsula to starboard. Roald Amundsen, perhaps the greatest polar traveller of all time, summed this scene up best: “Glittering white, shining blue, raven black, in the light of the sun the land looks like a fairy tale. Pinnacle after pinnacle, peak after peak, crevassed, wild as any lands on our globe, it lies, unseen and untrodden.”
Early this morning we entered the Neumayer Channel, then turned and threaded through the very narrow Peltier Channel, between Doumer and Weincke islands. This passage deposited our ship in the sheltered harbour at Port Lockroy, home of the earliest British station in the region. Built during the Second World War in 1944, Base A was intended to monitor enemy shipping in the area. After the war the station became a jumping-off spot for expeditions surveying and mapping the region for the next 20 years. Abandoned in the early 1960’s, Base A quickly fell into disrepair and was nearly a wreck by the 1980’s. However, with the timely intervention of current base leader Rick Atkinson and several colleagues, and the backing of British Antarctic Survey and the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust, the modest building was restored and now serves as a museum and heritage center. Passing a rack of dogsleds and innumerable nesting Gentoo penguins, upon entering the ‘hut’ one is instantly transported back to the Antarctica of the 1950’s – men living simply in the wilderness, dependent not on technology but rather their own resourcefulness and practicality.
After weighing anchor, we sailed north through the Neumayer channel and into the Gerlache Strait. Many of us spent the afternoon just sitting and staring at the stunning panorama of the mountains of Brabant Island on the port side and the Antarctic peninsula to starboard. Roald Amundsen, perhaps the greatest polar traveller of all time, summed this scene up best: “Glittering white, shining blue, raven black, in the light of the sun the land looks like a fairy tale. Pinnacle after pinnacle, peak after peak, crevassed, wild as any lands on our globe, it lies, unseen and untrodden.”
