The Sunday Times April 24, 2022 17
The South
Georgia
archipelago
is home to fur
seals, pipits and
king penguins,
left; the region
has been
significantly
affected by
climate change,
right
JAMIE LAFFERTY; MICHAEL BAYNES; LAUREN BATH; DANITA DELIMONT/ALAMY
TO
UTH
RGIA
south because there was too much ice
that year,” said Perrin, back on the Greg
Mortimer. “He ignored good local advice
and that doesn’t deserve any admiration.
That was a bad call. And yet, when the
shit did hit the fan, he had skill as a leader,
someone who could make things happen,
keep people going and maintain the will
to live. That’s the stuff.”
Or, as Shackleton’s former shipmate
George Marston wrote in an obituary
in 1922: “Here, perhaps, we have the
secret of his success as a leader — that
power, given to so few, of making the
effort seem worthwhile.”
In the middle of our time in South
Georgia we made a pilgrimage, one made
by thousands of Antarctic tourists in an
ordinary year, but by far fewer in the
pandemic-blighted 2021-22 season.
From the moment we stepped ashore
at Maiviken it felt like we were in the
company of ghosts, just as it did for all
three miles of the hike to Grytviken,
Shackleton’s final resting place.
Before we could even see the decaying
whaling station, we heard the mournful
bell of the old whalers’ church being rung
by fellow passengers who had been
unwilling or unable to join the trek and
sailed ahead.
We continued into the settlement and
were met by a chilling fog, the wreckage
of the Petrel whaleship barely visible from
a distance, the rusting remnants of its
awful trade all around us. “In the bay
dead whales floated, on the shore their
carcasses rotted, and the beach was thick
with their bleaching bones,” wrote
Marston of this place. “We breathed the
smell of whale day and night and fed on
whale meat in company with the dogs.”
Eventually we arrived at the cemetery.
To the side, a young fur seal pup dozed on
the grave of Johanes Rodsten, who died
here on July 29, 1912. Shackleton lay at the
back, facing south, his grave made in the
style of everyone else’s, only grander,
more difficult to ignore.
Aurora staff poured a whisky for all the
passengers in attendance. A passage of
poetry was read, a toast raised to the
Boss. It felt significant, but I was instead
struck by the inscription on the front of
Shackleton’s monolithic headstone. After
a life of such high adventure, just one
incontestable word was etched into the
granite below his name: Explorer.
Jamie Lafferty was a guest of Aurora
Expeditions, which offers a 19-day
South Georgia and Antarctic Odyssey
voyage aboard the Greg Mortimer from
£14,525pp, based on two people sharing a
state cabin (auroraexpeditions.co.uk).
Price includes return flights between
Santiago, Chile, and the embarkation
point of Stanley in the Falkland Islands;
all meals, snacks and some drinks; shore
excursions, Zodiac cruises and on-board
lectures. Fly to Santiago with British
Airways from £845 (ba.com)
standing in British society, made it
possible to distribute the story throughout
the English-speaking world. And he wasn’t
a man short of ego.”
Shackleton died in South Georgia’s
Grytviken Harbour, aboard his final ship,
the Quest, on January 5, 1922. The
centenary was set to be marked in 2022
by Antarctic expedition cruises.
Serendipitously, on March 5, exactly 100
years after Shackleton was
lowered into the frozen
ground at Grytviken,
Endurance was found
at the bottom of the
Weddell Sea by the
Endurance22 team,
led by the polar
geographer Dr John
Shears. After gathering
their extraordinary
footage of the old ship, the
team came to South Georgia to
visit Shackleton’s grave and give him the
good news.
We arrived a couple of weeks later
and had the island to ourselves, but the
downside of travelling in the austral
autumn was that increasingly violent
weather systems were closing in. Perrin
and captain Oleg Klaptenko were in
constant contact, debating which landings
would be best so passengers would get the
most from this singular archipelago.
Things were at their most perfect when
we reached the eastern part of the island.
We spent the morning cruising on Zodiacs
as brilliant sunshine illuminated Cooper
Bay, spotting four species of penguin, two
baleful leopard seals and yet more pipits.
With nerves and memory cards still
jangling, the afternoon had us at Gold
Harbour, home to tens of thousands of
king penguins and a fantastically flatulent
pile of moulting elephant seals.
Passengers became genuinely lost
for words, shrugging and smiling at
the overwhelming nature of their
experience. A hanging glacier at the end
of the beach made for a photogenic, if
poignant, backdrop. “It’s really shrunk
since I last saw it,” said the assistant
expedition leader Dan Stavert, ruefully.
“It’s only been three years and the
difference is incredible.”
What would the great icemen of the
heroic age of Antarctic exploration
make of the demise of their frozen world,
one wonders.
It’s not always easy to remain earnestly
objective when talking about Ernest. Few
people mention his dreadful decision-
making before disaster struck all those
years ago, nor his philandering, nor his
extensive cocaine use in the form of
Forced March tablets (“Allays hunger and
prolongs the power of endurance”). Like
most people familiar with Antarctica,
Perrin feels conflicted when discussing
the man they called the Boss.
“He didn’t listen to the whalers on
South Georgia who told him not to go
There are plenty of seal-spotting
opportunities, top; Shackleton
and Endurance, below
Maiviken
Grytviken
Gold
Harbour
Cooper Bay
Cape
Rosa
King Haakon
Bay
SOUTH
GEORGIA
ATL ANTIC
OCEAN
20 miles
Falkland
Islands
Just one word
was etched into
the granite
below his name
— explorer