History
Anthony de la Roche, a local merchant first sighted the islands in 1675, and
named South Georgia, Pepys Island after Samuel Pepys, the Admiralty Secretary.
The island was rediscovered in 1775 by Captain James Cook, who after dismissing
his find as “not worth the discovery”, went on to name it “the Isle of Georgia”
in honour of King George III. Cook was the first person to accurately map South
Georgia and for the first time, penguins were being described for scientific
purposes as Cook returned home to Plymouth with some king penguins from South
Georgia. However, as late as 1824, penguins were still being described as
`wooly penguins’ in science books!
The first British sealers reached South Georgia in 1778, killing elephant seals
for their oily blubber and throughout the 19th century, South Georgia was a
sealers’ base and in the following century, a whalers’ base until the whaling
ended.
During the Second World War, a small garrison force of Norwegian soldiers was
stationed at South Georgia to protect against possible invasion by Japanese
forces. But due to the remote location of the island, the cold was a worse
enemy than the Japanese was.The first land-based whaling station, Grytviken,
was set up in 1904 and was in operation until 1965.
South Georgia is famously associated with the explorer Ernest Shackleton. In
mid-January 1915, explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance with 28
members of his Antarctic expedition became trapped in solid pack-ice in the
Weddell Sea, just off Antarctica. Stuck on Endurance, the men did the
best they could to entertain themselves. They played various games to pass the
time, including `Animal, Vegetable or Mineral’ which Shackleton was expert at!
In November of 1915, Endurance was crushed and with the ship gone,
Shackleton and his men set up camp on a large ice floe. In April 1916, the ice
floe began to split up and so they took to Endurance's lifeboats and
battled for a week through the sea until they reached Elephant Island, a small,
bleak uninhabited atoll at the edge of the Antarctic Peninsula.
Rather then remain stranded, Shackleton and five others crammed into a lifeboat
(named the James Caird) and sailed across one the world’s stormiest,
most dangerous oceans to miraculously reach South Georgia 16 days later.
Worsley (Captain of the Endurance) whose navigational skills actually
got them to South Georgia wrote how Shackleton kept a constant eye on the state
of the men: -
`He seemed to keep a mental finger on each man’s pulse. If he noted one with
signs of strain telling on him, he would order hot milk and soon all would be
swallowing the scalding, life-giving drink to the especial benefit of the man,
all unaware, for whom it had been ordered’.
With great difficulty, they landed on South Georgia’s uninhabited side.
Frostbitten and crusted with sea-salt, it was not feasible to set sail again in
the wind, currents and high seas to one of the whaling stations on the island’s
north coast. And so Shackleton took two men, Worsley and Crean, with him and
together they crossed unknown mountains and crevasse-riddled glaciers without
equipment. Thirty-six hours later, without sleep or rest, they reached
Stromness whaling station and eventually Shackleton rescued all his men.
In 1922 Shackleton set off for Antarctica again in his ship, Quest.
Whilst onboard, he suffered a massive heart attack and died on the 5th January
1922. He was 48 years old. Ernest Shackleton was buried on a promontory
overlooking Grytviken harbour on South Georgia, a place vulnerable to the wind,
ice, snow and sea – the elemental forces that had inspired Shackleton’s life.
The territory of SGSSI was formed in 1985; previously they were governed as
part of the Falkland Islands Dependencies. There is no native population on any
of the islands and the only inhabitants today are the British Government
Officer, scientists and support staff from BAS who maintain a base at the
capital, King Edward Point and on Bird Island, and museum staff at nearby
Grytviken.
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