Elephant Island

 Sunday November 5th – Tuesday November 7, 2023


Elephant Seal, Fortuna Bay

Sunday was the first of two full days cruising the open ocean from South Georgia Island to Antarctica.  Among the many beautiful ice forms. we witnessed a giant tabular iceberg.  I had no idea how large icebergs could be, but this behemoth measured thirty-four miles long by twenty-two miles wide!  Labeled as D28D, it split away from one of the glaciers on the coast of Antarctica and is now drifting out to sea like a large city in the middle of nowhere.  Incredible.

One tiny section of the tabular iceberg D28D that went on an incredible 34 miles long.

We busied ourselves in various seminars and other activities until Tuesday morning when we awoke a little before 5:00AM with the ship positioned just off the coast of Elephant Island.  This inhospitable piece of rock is one of the northernmost South Shetland Islands.  The small beach within view was where Ernest Shackleton and his crew landed in three lifeboats after their ship, Endurance, was crushed in the pack ice.  They traveled for weeks across ice flows then launched the lifeboats and rowed for about six days before landing on this rocky, windswept and mountainous island. Shackleton and a crew of six then made an incredible open ocean journey to South Georgia to launch a rescue mission.  He traveled to Chile and made three initial attempts to reach the men stranded on Elephant Island but was thwarted by pack ice each time until he was finally successful aboard the small steamer, Yelcho, captained by Luis Alberto Pardo.  The country of Chile installed a bust to honor Capitan Pardo at Wild Point which was visible from our ship.  It was very moving to be there.  Not many people are able to make it to this spot due to its remoteness and fierce weather.  One of our guides noted that last year two people lost their lives when their Zodiac flipped in the violent surf.  I was fine witnessing the location from the safety of our ship, reflecting on the story of human survival that took place there a little over a century ago.

The desolate beach on Elephant Island where 22 of Shackleton's men were marooned for over four months.

Just off Elephant Island

Tuesday night we traveled farther south in a rough storm making sleep almost impossible.  The ship heaved up and slammed over 15 foot waves.  It felt like a small earthquake about every ten seconds.  When the captain was forced to reduce speed, one had the stomach-dropping feeling of going over the hill on a rollercoaster.  It was a relief when we finally stopped at Portal Point and began to prep for our first landing on the seventh continent.


Our ship, Sea Spirit, off Elephant Island

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