South Shetland Islands
Deception Island (Telefon Bay and Whalers Bay) We have made it to the South Shetland Islands after a crossing of the Drake Passage that welcomed us with increasing winds and growing seas from the start, when leaving behind the confined waters of the Beagle Channel. We had changeable weather, variable and shifting strong winds, large swells. Now we wake up at the southern shores of Deception Island; here we plan today’s activities. The ship waits outside of the island, ready to face the 30 kn of wind to enter the volcanic caldera of Deception, through the only entrance it has, Neptune’s Bellows.
At least the cloud cover has lifted, the sun shines now and then, and Port Foster, the large bay inside the island, could give some shelter for our scheduled visits ashore, to set foot on Antarctic lands for the first time on our voyage.
And what special lands they are: first manoeuvring through the narrow passage to access the interior of Deception’s volcanic caldera, then beginning our landings there. The island is also home to two research stations operated in summer, one Spanish and the other Argentinian.
From a volcanic origin as it is, Deception is not on its own as a volcano in the South Shetlands and north of the Antarctic Peninsula. The passage that separates them, the Bransfield Strait, started to experience its first episodes of volcanism about 25 million years ago. The beginning of a chain of both underwater and exposed volcanoes, lava flows, basalt formations, and intrusions. Since then there have been many occasions when the activity peaked and then relaxed. About 4 million years ago the once mighty volcano of Deception Island started to build up and surface from the depths. It was just recently in geological time, about 10,000 years ago, when it collapsed, becoming since then a flooded caldera.
Distinctive in shape and with an appearance unlike any other island in its surroundings, it didn’t take much time to catch the eye of the first people who ventured this far south after the discovery of the first Antarctic lands.
William Smith got the first sight of the South Shetlands in 1819. By the 15th of November 1820, the sealer Captain Nathaniel Palmer, aboard his ship Hero, came across Deception and landed close to the only existing entrance of its caldera.
The views he got were staggering: he stood on loose volcanic terrain; up the hills a glacier covered the highest points; and to the south, miles and miles away, he could see glaciers and snowy mountains. He had just spotted the Antarctic Peninsula.
He headed south and west and soon saw an island that, oddly, had less snow on it than its neighbours. He made his way along its eastern shore, which was straight as a ruler but too rugged to land. At the southern end was the massive bluff of Bailey Head and beneath it a beach which, even today, in tough inflatable powerboats, is a trophy landing.
The afternoon of 15 November 1820 was not a fine day. Snow was blowing up into a storm. Palmer felt his way down the coast and, at 20:00, finding no shelter, he stood off to ride out the night. At five the next morning he continued to where the cliffs had a bite out of them, before they reared up again in gigantic cliffs teeming with pintado petrels with irregular white flecks over the wings like paint spills. In mid-morning a slot-like gap opened in the coast and turned to starboard, rust-red rocks to his left. Instead of ending in a gully where one or perhaps two small ships might take precarious shelter, he found he had sailed into one of the world’s great natural harbours, up to five miles across. It is shaped like a horseshoe that has bent almost wholly closed.
He named the entrance Neptune’s Bellows, and the island whose shape had fooled him Deception Island. In thick weather he went ashore and climbed the south-facing crags to the bite in the cliffs, and named it Neptune’s Window. Mobbed by petrels, he collected eggs and trained his superb eyes on the south and east. On the horizon he saw land. Soon he would sail there and find land which proved to be the Antarctic mainland.
John Harrison, Forgotten Footprints: Lost Stories in the Discovery of Antarctica
These were the times when communication between sealers, explorers, and vessels in the area was extremely difficult. Others came as well to these newly discovered lands in search of sealing grounds, whaling, and also on charting and exploring expeditions. Like this, it happened that about ten months before Palmer, the Russian Fabian von Bellingshausen had a view too of the mainland mountains and glaciers. Apparently Edward Bransfield, sailing here with William Smith, had spotted them too.
Antarctica, the sought southern continent, hypothesised already by the Greeks and the subject of many adventures and misadventures during its search, including the complete circumnavigation of Antarctica by the famed Captain Cook in the late 1700s, had finally been found.
In such a unique environment, loaded with Antarctic historical episodes, we plan to spend a full day. To start with, after a windy and cold passage through Neptune’s Bellows, which funnels the northerly winds that sweep over the island, we find ourselves steaming northwards to Telefon Bay.
There the seas are flat, although a fresh breeze still blows. First adrift and keeping her position, then dropping anchor, Europa starts the operations to bring us all ashore.
We are at González Harbour, ready for hiking on the barren landscape of Telefon Bay, a curious name that has its origin in a vessel that used this bay for repairs.
The boats leave us inside the secluded bay of González Harbour, named in honour of Prof. Óscar González-Ferrán, author of several important papers on the evolution of the Deception Island volcano. At the beach we are welcomed by south polar skuas, a handful of chinstrap penguins, and a couple of gentoos; they just hang around here, taking a rest on their foraging trips. There is no rookery in the immediate area. Although no vegetation or wildlife are to be found higher up as we start our walks, the views are fantastic. This morning’s good visibility lets us have a look at the whole of Port Foster and its coast. At a closer distance, several of Deception’s secondary craters, some flooded by the sea and showing beautiful green-emerald-blue colours.
Some of us prefer a longer leg stretch after the few days past aboard since the departure of our trip, and climb to the top of Cross Hill, rising 160 meters above sea level. Of the same character and beauty, others join a less steep hike over lower terrain.
With this scenic landing done, now it is time to get back aboard, heave anchor, and head south into Port Foster to the neighbourhood of Neptune’s Bellows. Here a wide open embayment can be found: Whalers Bay.
Two things quickly catch the eye: a steaming beach with fumaroles of heated water that soak the volcanic sands and pebbles at the shore at low tide, and the remnants left behind of the Hector whaling station. There we plan to end our afternoon walks, but before soaking into the haunting remains and ruins, once ashore we first walk up the hills of Cathedral Crags ridge, to the very same area where the story tells us that over 200 years ago Nathaniel Palmer saw the faraway coasts of the Antarctic Peninsula on a sunny, clear day.
First, though, we spend some time at the landing spot, which we share with a couple of fur seals and a solitary leopard seal snoozing at the tideline. In the meantime, the weather quickly becomes overcast and soon snow and rain fall, driven by a rising wind. With it, the visibility worsens too, meaning that from up the hills we are not getting the same view Palmer had. Nevertheless, from up there there is always an unbeatable view over the Bransfield Strait and Neptune’s Bellows.
Back down at the beach, sleet falls and the wind keeps picking up, offering an even ghostlier visit to the many remains of the whaling station, which was originally built in 1912 and operated until 1931. By the end of this period, the first ever flight in Antarctica took off from the flats above the beach on 16 November 1928. Although it ran for this relatively short period as a whale-processing facility, the station also saw other historical times and was repurposed on a couple of occasions: first as a base for a secret military enterprise codenamed “Operation Tabarin” during WWII, and later when the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (FIDS), the former British Antarctic Survey, used the buildings for scientific research purposes. Nowadays, considered an open-air museum and an Antarctic Historical Site, all the infrastructure is falling apart, left to nature to reclaim.
Still standing, large oil tanks stand out. Close to them, different sets of pressure boilers. Derelict buildings pepper the bay too: boat sheds, storage shacks, living quarters. Here and there lie half-buried a few old whaling sloops. At the northern end of the bay, a large hangar where two small planes were stowed in the past can be visited too.
By the time we walked around and had a good look at it all, everyone was wet and cold, notwithstanding the strong wind and rain for hours. Time for shuttling back aboard to the cosy, dry, and warm ship, while the anchor comes back home and then she heads off Deception. Out in the Bransfield again, the wind meter shows 30–35 kn of headwinds on our way, now northwards for 34 nautical miles. Our goal is to be in the McFarlane Strait for tomorrow, between the impressive Livingston Island and Greenwich Island, the most sheltered area in the surroundings to face the unfavourable meteorology and have a slight chance to land tomorrow, or at least to wake up in a completely different scenery and location. But the passage there wasn’t the easiest either. For a moment the gusts climb up to 50 kn, to relax and drop later on. Late during the night, the anchor drops at the relatively protected Half Moon Island.
