Day 25 Penguin River

Friday, 20th April 2012. Our ship returned to Cumberland Bay for a visit to King Edward Point (K.E.P.), the capital of South Georgia. Well, I say 'capital' - but don't be tempted to conjure up images of urban sprawl and high rise city centres made from glass and steel. The wintering population at King Edward Point is a mere 8 or 9 people - government officers, fisheries observers and technicians. The James Clark Ross made a final call of the season to take away waste and deliver some cargo. The other plan was a purely touristic one - go ashore and see the place.

Grytviken, South Georgia

It means a lot to visit a place like South Georgia. Not many people have. This season only 5,000 cruise ship passengers called there. During most of history it has been remote enough to be out of reach of human activity. Although first sighted in 1675 (by Antoine de la Roche) and then again in 1756 (by Gregorio Jerez aboard the Leon) these early explorers didn't make landfall. This task was left to none other than Captain Cook who on the 17th January 1775 went ashore with a small landing party and a handful of muskets. Shots were fired, presumably a flag was planted and with all the imperial pomp and circumstance that was the flavour of the times the island was claimed for King and Country. They named the landing site on the north-west shore Possession Bay and were full of hope that they might have stumbled upon an outcrop of Terra Incognita - the fabled southern continent that had been their mission to find, chart and claim for the King. Cook's ship the Resolution rounded the island from the west and just three days later they saw their hopes dashed. The last point of land which proved their new conquest to be an island was named Cape Disappointment. Terra Incognita, now known as Antarctica, had to be charted another day.

Fur seal at Grytviken jetty

Cook wrote in his journal that South Georgia was "not worth the discovery" and these were lands "Doomed by nature to perpetual frigidness". He proved to be wrong on both counts. Firstly, he made notes on the abundant wildlife on the island, which did not go unnoticed at a time when North Atlantic whaling and sealing grounds were already showing signs of depletion. The first sealers arrived in 1786 to hunt fur seals and around 1800 no less than 112,000 pelts were taken in a single season. Fur seals had evolved without human contact and show no fear when approached and can easily be killed. Millions were slaughtered on an industrial scale. In 1894 whalers joined the gold rush in South Georgia. Whaling stations were established by Norwegian whaling captains from 1904. The epic slaughter of whales in the Southern Ocean began and it reached a deadly crescendo in 1925 when nearly 8000 whales (mostly fin whales) were taken in a single season. The boom was short-lived and dwindling whale stocks forced the closure of most shore-based stations by the 1930s. Whaling briefly resumed after the war when Japanese and Soviet factory ships joined the race for easy profits but by 1965 it was all over. The mechanised slaughter had murdered entire species of whales and seals to the brink of extinction. This questionable industry had become a victim of it own "success". The whales had gone. We saw one lonesome blow of a Southern Right Whale in the distance during 2 days in Cumberland Bay. A shocking observation compared to the early days when one could "walk across Cumberland Bay on their backs" and they have not yet returned. Only the fur seals have managed to successfully rebound into the ecological niche left vacant by the great whales. Their numbers are on the up and South Georgia, now mostly deserted by man, is once again left to be seal country.


Captain cook had also been wrong (or just unlucky) on his second assessment of South Georgia. While howling snow storms and ferocious catabatic hurricanes can swoop down from the mountains at a moment's notice, the day of our visit was graced by blue sky and sunshine. I woke up to a stunning sunrise, which bathed the snowy peaks of the central Allardyce mountain range in a soft, orange Alpenglow. After breakfast we were welcomed to South Georgia by Kieran, a government official stationed at K.E.P., who gave the visitor's briefing. He stressed once again the importance of biosecurity - safeguards against the accidental intruduction of alien species to the fragile island ecosystem. The local government had already spent over 1.5 million pounds on eliminating brown rats which are lethal to the ground-nesting sea birds. Several sectors of the island had been declared rat-free after the world's most extensive rat eradication programme. While the rats originated from early sailing vessels and whale boats, a modern-day visitor is more likely to import seeds, spores or viruses that hitchhike on footwear or velcro strips. We were even asked not to rest our bags on certain types of mosses and grasses, which are potentially vunerable to foreign microbes.

Whaling ship at Grytviken

We had looked forward to mooring up alongside the jetty at K.E.P. from where it's convenient to walk to many of the popular tourist spots. But our berth was still occupied by the Dutch cruise ship 'Plancius' which had limped into port on 11th April with partial engine failure. The 70 stranded passengers plus hotel staff had already been evacuated to Montevideo. We saw the relief vessel 'Ushuaia' leaving port 2 days ago while conducting a CTD survey of Cumberland Bay. The 89-metre cruise ship and a tugboat were still berthed at K.E.P. however, so we dropped anchor instead and used the cargo tender to ferry people and goods ashore.


The cargo tender took us to the old Norwegian whaling station Grytviken, meaning "Pot Bay", just across from K.E.P. Grytviken was the first of the shored-based whale processing plants to be founded on South Georgia in 1904. It was the last to be closed in 1965 and is now the only remaining one open to tousists. A young fur seal hissed and barked at us as we stepped on to the beach to visit the abandoned station. Recently a lot of the old buildings had been dismantled for the dangers posed by asbestos and metal roof sheets that became dislodged in hurricane winds. The site is still crammed with the rusting remains of steam-powered exploitation. The old whaling ship "Petrel" now lies half-beached next to the jetty. As a poignat reminder its harpoon cannon is still mounted on the bow, aimed blankly towards the mountains.

Fred at Shackleton's grave

The nutrient-rich waters south of the Polar Front put South Georgia on the map for whaling and sealing, but for all its remoteness the island is also inextricably linked with human endevour and exploration. Of all the explorers that came and went it is the name of Sir Ernest Shackleton that stands out as a giant amongst men. He is connected to the island up to the present day not just by how he once arrived, but also because he is one of those that stayed. During the 1914-1916 British Imperial Trans-Antarctic expedition Shackleton's ship, the "Endurance", had been crushed in the pack ice forcing him and his men to trek northwards over the ice before escaping in small boats to Elephant Island. Shackleton was determined to resue his men, so he left his "right hand man" Frank Wild and 21 others to winter on Elephant Island where they survived in a shelter built from upturned boats. The remaining six men, including Shackleton himself and his navigator Frank Worsley got into the 9m long open boat "James Caird" on 24 April 1916 to sail to South Georgia from where a rescue mission would be organised. Their journey which led them through ferocious storms across 800 miles of open ocean and over 4000-feet high glaciers of South Georgia has been described as one of the greatest adventures in polar history. On 19 May a dishevelled figure staggered into the station manager's house at Stromness harbour to tell his tale and organise a relief vessel - his men would be safe.

Fur seal at King Edward Point

Shackleton organised another Antarctic expedition on the "Quest" in 1921-1922 together with Frank Wild and several members of the Endurance expedition. However, on 5th January 1922 Shackleton suffered a heart attack aboard the Quest and he died, thereby effectively ending the expedition. His wife asked for his body to be interred at South Georgia, as she sensed that this is what he would have wanted. I visited Shackleton's grave in a small cemetery not far from the whaler's church of Grytviken. Of all the traditionally east-facing graves of whalers and seamen, his grave is the only one that faces south. Recently an urn containing the ashes of Frank Wild was rediscovered and transferred to the same cemetery at a spot to the right of Shackleton. A new head stone was carved and it reads "Shackleton's Right hand Man". One can't help but feel that this is what Wild would have wanted too.

Vickers gun

After the hero worship at Grytviken we set out on a walk over the hills in search of scenery and wildlife. The walk over Dartmoor-style moorland took us past various military relicts. We came across an old Vickers gun placement and a little lookout hut that was riddled in bullet holes. At the bottom of a ravine we spotted the wreck of an argentine helicopter that had crashed during the 1982 conflict. The terrain rose higher and offered breath-taking views over Cumberland Bay. The mountains of the Allardyce Range and its glaciers gleamed in the mid-day sun. From the summit ridge the ground steeply dropped away and opened up to a vast valley. It was the fluvial plain of a river leading into the sea from meltwater lakes that were fed by the mountain's countless glaciers. This wasn't just any river. We had arrived at "Penguin River".

Penguin River valley and Allardyce mountain range

King penguins

Penguin River may not be the official name of the site, and even so it should better have been named Seal River. Before we reached the gravel beds down in the flood plains we had to run the gauntlet of hundreds of fur seals hidden in the tussock grass. Thankfully each of them let us know about their presence with noisy hollering, barking and hissing. It felt like a scene from Indiana Jones - jumping from grassy mound to mound until we had reached a small gravel island in the middle of the river. This is where we camped out for a while, bodies pressed close to the ground and watched a family of King penguins. It seemed the river did deserve the name after all. And so did the penguins - their brilliant white and black coat with dazzling splashes of orange gave them the regal demeanor that their name suggested.

Preying skua stalks penguins

In the midst of the king penguin group were several juveniles in grey plumage. These scruffy fluff-balls were called them 'Oakum Boys' by early sailors for their resemblence to the oily fibres used to caulk wooden ships. Indeed they look so different from their tuxedoed parents that they were originally classified as their own species of "whoolly penguin". Another not so obvious visitor to the penguin family was a Skua - a bird known to snatch an unattended egg or chick at a moment's notice. The skua was sitting right amongst the adults and juveniles, but surely the woolly ones were old enough already to defend theselves against a skua. The secret was lifted a while later when a squawking chick emerged from a feathery fold of an adult where it had been sitting on its feet. It was no bigger than a couple of inches and seemed utterly helpless in this world. The presence of the chick now fully explained the intentions of the skua, which was simply waiting on the sidelines for the briefest of moments to snatch the chick should its parents turn away for a second. It is not unusual to see two generations of juvenile king penguins together. In fact it is completely normal - the 18 month breeding cycle of this species is staggered - while older juveniles are still being looked after by some parents the next generation may already be on its way.

King penguins with chick

Male elephant seals

All around the river bank there were fur seals dozing in the sun or playing in the river. They are fast movers, despite their waddling hopping motion on land, they come into their own in water. Young seals were pupoising through the water as fast as I could run. Thankfully their aggressive gestures were nothing more than a bluff. Everytime I returned the bluff by growling at them or stretching out my leg to shove my boots in their general direction they whinced and retreated briefly. The trek through the tussock grass became a whole lot more interesting when Gaz waved me over and motioned to be quiet. He had stumbled upon two fully grown elephant seal bulls that were wallowing in a mud pit camouflaged by the tussock. The one facing up slowly woke up from its slumber and made the most primeval noises. In front of us two times 2 tons of blubber and they were groggily waking up from their snooze in the sun. These things are a formidable sight and I could not for the life of me work out how they had heaved their bodies out of the sea without breaking several laws of physics. We didn't get any closer and slowly retreated backwards which made the elephant seals happy again and their grunting eventually stopped.

Young fur seals

Female elephant seals

The beach on the seawardside of penguin river was home to thousands more fur seals and I got to see the female elephant seals as well. The females congregated in small groups, and generally hissed and barked if anyone strayed too close. They are much smaller than the bulls but I didn't want to call their bluff despite their speed on land being much slower than of a fur seal. Elephant seals are "true seals" that cannot point their hind flippers forward to hop along liek dogs. That makes them better adapted under water, but slower on land. Apart from being littered with seals the beach was also covered with whale bones from a bygone era of undiscriminate slaughter. After decades of weathering in the surf and sun they looked like driftwood and it was mostly their characteristic shape which gave them away as bones. A highlight of the whale bones was the hip bone of a very large individual, possibly a blue or fin whale which, when I stood next to it for scale, allowed a vague guess at the enormeous size of its original owner.

Fred with a giant whale hip bone

The walk from Grytviken, steeped in grisly history, to Penguin river, teeming with wildlife, has been the unrivalled highlight of my trip down south so far. The open valley where vividly green grass meets the glistening white of the glacier. The wind blown summits in the distance which pierce into a cobalt-blue sky. These awe-inspiring colours combined with the natural wonders of seals, penguins and their predators had placed South Georgia into the Top 10 of most beautiful places I have ever seen. There will never be a definite winner - how can you compare the natural beauty of a pristine coral reef with the bleak, yet beautiful desolation of a high alpine summit. But South Georgia is now firmly in my Top 10 - just next to Komodo Island, Lembeh Straits, Fijian beaches or the Mont Blanc range of the French-Italian Alps to name but a few.

Rusting wrecks at Grytviken

On my return to Grytviken I also visited the museum, church and the post office which are all worthy of a mention in their own right. But I thought I'd leave it at magical wildlife encounters and the history of human endevour on these shores, while keeping my memory of the present human occupation for another time.


The James Clark Ross weighed anchor at King Edward Point and left Cumberland at nightfall to brave the large ocean swell on the long journey back to the Falkland Islands. Our ETA at Stanley is on the 24th April. Plenty of time to cast my mind back to the magic at Penguin River.



(The books "South Georgia, Antartic Sanctuary" by Kevin Schafer, Coach
House Publications, 2006 and "Shackleton" by Roland Huntford, Abacus,
1985 helped in compiling some of the historical information in this article)