Saturday, January 9, 2016: Anchored off Point Wild and Elephant Island

Weather Forecast: mostly cloudy with sunny periods; temperature approximately 23°F with windchill 21°; gentle breeze W-NW 10 knots

Today we visited Elephant Island, named for its shape, on the outer reaches of the South Shetland Islands. The island was made famous by the Antarctic expedition of Ernest Shackleton and his crew in 1914-1917, a hundred years ago. After being beset in ice for 281 days and the sinking of their ship Endurance, the 28 men used life boats and drifting ice floes to make their way north towards land. Three months later they sighted the inhospitable mountains and cliffs of Elephant Island and landed here. To summon help, Shackleton and five others made the remarkable sea passage in a small open boat to South Georgia, 700 nautical miles away. The remaining 22 men camped under upturned boats on low-lying Point Wild for 137 days, surviving on penguins and seal blubber.

Point Wild was named for Frank Wild, Shackelton’s constant companion in adventure, an indispensable but quiet right-hand man.

This bust is Captain Luis Alberto Pardo, the captain of the Chilean steam tug that rescued the stranded crewmen of the Endurance. Although I could find hardly anything online, in the South Atlantic it seems strange that an insignificant person in the story was chosen to be honored. Of course, that’s the Argentineans speaking. The Chileans thought it was just. And so, we have politics even at the end of the earth.

Bon Mot for today: “We must always remember with gratitude and admiration the first sailors who steered their vessels through storms and mists and increases our knowledge of the lands of the ice in the South.” – Ronald Amundsen (1872-1928).