Part I: Seals teeth and whales ears - Scott Polar Research Institute ...

“The King Penguin” On re-reading it the distinctive jingoistic flavour of those times
comes through, so it is worth quoting:
The King Penguin
On a desolate rock of the outer isles the lord of the penguins stood
And he looked his last on the stormy blast and a world that was not good
For the Nicaraguan Navy swept the rim of the icy seas
And the Guatemalan flag flew high on the rude Antarctic breeze
And he folded his flippers about his breast and he murmured "Was it vain
The fight for trade that the sea-dogs made with the towering ships of Spain?
I have grown too old to be consoled, too old to shout hurrah
At the threats of war from Ecuador and the sloops of Panama:
Little by little they break away from the breed that gave me birth
The lordliest empire ever seen by the sun that tours the earth
(For a Briton's hand upon British land as soon as his face was wet
Would wave him on before he was gone, he had no time to set).
But now the Yugo-Slavian types can mock at the power I knew,
And the Falkland gulls salute the hulls of the squadrons of Peru;
I have seen the days when the guns would blaze and the whole sea surge with
foam
Or ever they let some alien set his foot on my island home.
I have lived too long to see the wrong of a Patagonian peace
Imposed on the grebe and the albatross and the kelp and the upland geese."
He folded his flippers about his breast, and he paced his piece of rock,
He saw the Bolivian Admiral land and he could not stand the shock;
He dived for ever beneath the waves, but as he plunged he said
"I will not bow to a stranger's rule, I am English born and bred,
They have taken the splendour away from the world, and now
they have laid their ban
On the University graduate vote – and I was a Balliol man."
Bud Young then spoke for some time after noisily drinking a glass of beer. We
heard of the Biscoe's eventful return journey to Britain, when she towed the Highland
Monarch into a port in Brazil and claimed salvage money. There followed a series of
records and messages from their relatives to various Falkland Islanders serving on
FIDS and later we listened to ‘Much Binding in the Marsh’, a popular radio comedy
show at that time, and heard the midnight news on BBC World Service. Joe Louis
was still the World heavyweight champion and Chile was now in the sterling area.
The latter was rather important to us as it meant that we might be able to travel in
South America, breaking the voyage home. So there was some chance of our getting
to Tierra del Fuego yet! (Derek in fact did.)
At the beginning of July I received a telegram from the Governor requesting
information on the state of the digesters in the sealing factory. We expected him to be
better informed, as it was a whaling factory and was dealt with in Robin's report.
However I duly went down to the shore to inspect the digesters and the boiler, and
sent a report stating that I considered them quite useless due to heavy rusting, etc.
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