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

However, the chart appeared to be sadly inaccurate! No seal were visible,
although we steamed slowly along, just offshore and at 12.10 pm I went down to
lunch as we increased speed and left the bay, heading back to the north-east coast.
From the description given in his book ‘South’, it was possible to pick out the site
of Shackleton's ‘Peggotty Camp’.
Nothing of interest happened as we returned to the north coast; we saw more
of the country, for the clouds were not so low as when we passed that way earlier,
but it confirmed the first impression of extremely bleak ruggedness and bareness.
Again we took the hazardous short cut through La Roche Strait/ Bird Sound. The
wind increased again as we left and we were borne down the coast by a following
sea, the crests of the waves against a low sun being a translucent jade green, lined
with darker streaks of foam; birds glided along the slopes. A whale-catcher
appeared on the horizon behind us, but probably went into Elsehul, for we saw no
more of it. We passed inside Welcome Islands, home to a large macaroni penguin
rookery on the south coast – above cliffs with only a narrow ‘staircase’ for ingress
and egress by the birds. Then we rounded Cape Buller, passed Koppervik and at
7.50 pm anchored in Allardyce Harbour as the sun was setting. The evening
passed quickly, reading and talking in a mixture of languages and on all kinds of
subjects.
All night there were rain-squalls and strong winds and it was still blowing in
the morning. I got up early and listened to the whale-catchers talking amongst
themselves on the radio – the bad weather seemed to be universal. We remained
at anchor all day and were joined by the whale catcher Busen 9. The day passed
quickly enough again, reading, eating, sleeping and talking. Arne, the Gunner,
told me that he had been coming down there for thirty years – 23 whaling and
seven sealing. The Second Mate had been whaling for nine seasons, but this was
his first sealing season. Captain Hauge had been based at South Georgia for thirty
years and had plenty of interesting and adventurous tales. In the evening there
was the usual session in the galley; I tried maté, an infusion of the leaves of a South
American shrub, but didn't particularly care for it. The discussions centred on
atomic energy, Argentina and women. The Engineer proudly showed me photos
of his wife and family back home in Norway. The wind had been blowing at gale
force all day and the ship rolled to the squalls as though she were in a heavy sea;
at times it seemed as if she must turn turtle, but the sea surface remained flat.
We up-anchored at 6.30 am next day and left. I had an unsettled night as the
door of the cabin flew open several times and it filled with wind and snow. It was
colder than usual washing on deck. There was the usual black pudding, bacon,
porridge and coffee for breakfast; the coffee was always chopped finely with a
knife, rather than ground, and left to brew upon the stove all day, with more
chopped coffee beans being added from time to time – so it was pretty evil stuff.
We passed inside the main islands of the Bay of Isles, but saw little of the
mainland because of low cloud. Then, passing Cape Crewe and Possession Bay,
we anchored in Blue Whale Harbour at 8.20 am after twice steaming around close
inshore to reconnoitre. The boats were lowered and we landed on a beach, where
I saw my first king penguin and counted 82 small and medium sized male
elephant seals. We saw none large enough to kill though, and set off back to the
ship, which already had the anchors aweigh and was leaving the cove. It was a
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