Page 83 - MERCIAN Eagle 2020

In the Footsteps of Shackleton and Scott
Col (Retd) David Sneath TD DL
In early January 2020 I joined forty-seven other passengers at Bluff, New Zealand,
to board the Professor Khromov; a former survey ship taken on charter by Heritage Travel with her Russian crew of twenty- one. She is ice hardened and just over
two thousand tonnes without fin stabilisers for the Southern Ocean. This was an expedition and not a cruise; the deal was being woken at any time of the day or night to take to the Zodiacs.
After visiting three Sub-Antarctic Islands for their wildlife, we crossed the Antarctic Circle at 66° 33’ South, celebrated on the foredeck by the sea water ‘Polar Shower.’ Not having packed bathing trunks, I did it in my ‘shreddies.’
Not having packed bathing trunks, I did it in my ‘shreddies’
On board, we had unlimited access to the bridge for the views and below deck was a small lecture theatre for briefings and lectures including the Heroic Age of Exploration by Maxim Ilin from Murmansk. His countryman, Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen, is credited with discovering the Continent in January 1820. We celebrated the bicentenary at a party on the pack ice with a photogenic Emperor penguin.
At Cape Adare we went ashore in sight of the first hut built on the Antarctic Continent for the 1899-1901 British Antarctic
Celebrating the bicentenary of the discovery of the Antarctic in 1820
Expedition led by Carsten Borchgrevinck. The expedition was British funded but largely Norwegian crewed; it was the first
to over-winter on the Continent. Unable to visit the hut because of changing sea ice, we communed instead with a quarter million Adelie penguins on the shore.
We next landed in Terra Nova Bay at 2200 hrs in bright sunlight to see the German Gondwana and South Korean stations. Topographical features included Mount Melbourne and the great Campbell Glacier named after a member of Scott’s Northern Party of six who were stranded when the Terra Nova could not reach their RV owing to pack ice. They had to over- winter in 1911-12 in an igloo built on an island which until then had no name. The party survived on penguin and seal meat before walking the 300 miles back to Cape Evans; being gentlemen, they called it Inexpressible Island and we visited the site at 0500 hrs that morning.
Further South the Italian Station members welcomed us in brilliant sunshine with
The interior of Shackleton’s hut
THE MERCIAN EAGLE
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