Polar Voyages
Page 34
With the South Pole attained by Amundsen in 1911, and confirmation that the great southern continent was covered in a mass of ice, interest dwindled; so with the explorers passing another commercial prey was found, the baleen whale. In first half of the twentieth century the only ships that went to the Antarctic were the whaling fleets with catcher vessels and large factory ships, where whole whales were hauled on board up the stern ramp. Now, the whalers have gone and thanks to them most of the whales too. All that remains of those times can be seen at places like Grytviken, and Stromness in south Georgia.
Now fifty years on and it is the specialised ice strengthened expedition ships that pass down through the Roaring Forties into the great Southern Ocean. Ships are now carrying a new breed of crew and for the first time, passengers. Naturalists, ornithologists, lecturers, marine biologists and passengers keen to see and learn about these fantastic and remote regions and the wild life that lives there, rather than working men who joined a whaling expedition for the simple reason that it was good money.
In the Arctic it is a similar story, the first ships to explore the region were the fur sealers from Norway and Russia. Then came the whalers from Europe and Arctic whale camps such as Smeersburg and whaling captains such as the Scoresbys. When Arctic whaling passed its peak in the nineteenth century it was replaced by trawl fishing in the twentieth century. In the UK the old whaling ports such as Hull, Whitby, Dundee Aberdeen and many others became the centres for trawl fishing. Ships from the UK, France, Germany as well as Russia and East Germany, France, Poland and Portugal all sailed to the northern seas from the Grand Banks to Novoya Zemlya in search of cod and haddock and Greenland Halibut.
Again time and industries have passed. During the Cold War submarines and warships patrolled the northern seas. The Cold War is over, so we are told, but some think it is just a lull while Russia rebuilds her powerful submarine fleet. However, for the moment at least, it is big cruise ships and small expedition ships that sail across North Cape Bank in the Barents Sea past Bear Island to Spitsbergen. Very few trawlers are now seen in these once rich grounds. One wonders what sort of ships will be sailing these waters a hundred years from now. Perhaps the cod will have returned and large scale fishing will resume? Perhaps oil exploration will send drilling rigs and supply ships into these regions, who can say?
There are still many places I still want to visit, and some places I want to visit again. We are very fortunate as we now live by the sea and we can see ships passing by every day. From the VLCCs arriving at the oil terminal with tugs busying around to get them onto the berth, to product tankers and small container ships going up and down the estuary, to the occasional RN ship and large cruise ships that drop anchor nearby. I am a bit of a dreamer and often look at magazines and travel brochures and say to Doreen, ‘Ah, now there’s a voyage I would love to do’.
1. Kingston Onyx hauling her nets. She is shown in her Hellyer Bros colours. Originally she was owned by the Kingston Steam Trawling Co., before Hellyers took over Kingstons. Photographic note: Taken with a hand-held 400-mm telephoto lens from the deck of HMS Keppel.
2. Chinstrap penguin.
3. MT Portia in Isafjord in north-west Iceland. Isafjord was the scene of a double tragedy in the winter of 1967/68 when two Hull trawlers were lost in the same week due to heavy icing.
4. A lone Gentoo penguin on a stroll in the sun at Port Lockroy.
5. Midshipman Gray taken by a shivering Graeme aboard HMS Keppel off Iceland in the winter of 1970.
6. A Hull trawler fishing off Iceland. Decks and railings icing up as she rolls in the swell. Believed to be St Gerontius, owned by T. Hamlings. Photographic note: Taken with a hand-held 400-mm telephoto lens from the deck of HMS Keppel.
7. Icebreaker Kapitan Dranitsyn run by the Murmansk Shipping Company where she is based. Note the polar bear emblem on the funnel.
8. After a good walk and steep climb we found the nest of a light-mantled sooty albatross above Grytviken.
9. A zodiac motors past a grounded iceberg near Ymer Oy (island).
10. A small berg, ‘like a white pearl sitting on black velvet’.
11. Doreen enjoying the air in the Greenland Sea on board Professor Molchanov.
12. Deep in Kaiser Frans Josef Fjord.
13. The bear retrieves his lunch from the ice edge and heads off.
14. Polar bear. (Photo by kind permission of Carina Svensson of Polar Quest)
15. Disturbed by the ships, the walruses stare at us in a totally disinterested way.
16. An early-morning kill. Polar bears find their breakfast.
17. Two puffins swim alongside the Zodiac.
18. Iceberg in the evening sun just off the village of Scoresbysund.
19. The 14th July Glacier in Krossfjord, Spitsbergen.
20. A walrus eyes us cautiously.