Part III: Antarctica and Academe - Scott Polar Research Institute

knots. She was well-equipped, for biological and other investigations, with four
small laboratories and a zodiac rubber dinghy with powerful engine. Captain Lenie,
who had met us at the airport, was a real character - a small Belgian who fought in
World War I and lived in England for a while, he was now an American citizen. He
was over-qualified for the ‘Hero’ command and presumably stayed because he liked
the life and work.
We learnt by radio from the BAS Twin Otters, which had passed over recently,
that there was a 250 mile belt of pack ice between us and King George Island - our
first goal. The following morning there was a light snowfall and we breakfasted in
sunshine enjoying the view. Later we went along to the warehouse, which seemed a
shambles of disorder, with equipment, food and clothing in variable condition piled
higgledy-piggledy in one section of a large warehouse on the dock. In a small
clothing store there was mostly second-hand clothing of all descriptions, but no
inventory. Some of the equipment was rusting away; although the store was the
responsibility of the company Holmes and Narver, no one was in charge. But two
local residents, Natalie and Tommy Goodall, as a kindness kept a general eye on it.
Tommy was a grandson of Lucas Bridges (author of "Uttermost part of the Earth"
which I had read many years before) and ran Harburton Station, a large estancia or
sheep farm on the shores of the Beagle Channel. We moved gear onto the ship and
Wayne and Nick set about getting some camping gear together from the assortment
of equipment.
By then it was too late for lunch on the ‘Hero’ so we had a delicious meal of
centolla (spider crab) and wine at a small restaurant. There wasn't much of interest in
Ushuaia - just a long main street and two or three parallel streets and the port and
Naval base. That evening we went along to visit the Goodalls at their home and to
see Natalie's collection of marine mammal skeletons. We stayed until midnight. She
had made a remarkable collection of stranded specimens of whales, dolphins and
seals - mainly from the shores of a large bay, Bahia San Sebastian on the Atlantic
coast of Patagonia. There were representatives of elephant, leopard, crabeater, and
Ross seals, as well as sea lions and fur seals; also a varied collection of cetaceans:
Lissodelphis, Commerson's dolphin, Lagenorhynchus australis, L.cruciger, Phocaena
spinniformis, Phocaena dioptrica, Globicephala melaena, Ziphius cavirostris, Mesoplodon
greyi, Orcinus orca, Pseudorca crassidens , fin and minke whales among others. The
house had whale and seal skeletons lying along the rafters and a series of dolphin
skeletons hanging on the wall in the maid's bedroom!
Natalie had embedded flipper bones in acrylic resins and could identify species
from various single bones - bullae, ulnar, sternum, vertebrae etc. Her collection was
extremely well organized and professionally documented with complete data sheets,
very neat labels and so on. There was a wealth of valuable material and I was most
impressed; there were species represented by many specimens that occurred rarely
in the museums of the world. The skeletons were prepared by boiling the carcasses
in 45 gallon oil drums over an open fire in the back garden; the smell was pretty rich
and this activity couldn't be very popular with the neighbours, although of great
value to marine mammal science!
She also had a botanical collection - which we didn't see - and some very
attractive drawings, maps and a book on the natural history of Patagonia that she
had published. She was a very talented woman. We talked about the mammals of
139