I’m writing this as our ship, One Ocean’s Akademik Ioffe, holds position off Point Wild, Elephant Island. The whole island is a lump of rock in the middle of the Drake Passage and, as expected, the swell running is far too big to even attempt to launch a Zodiac. But the fog that was around at lunchtime has completely lifted and we have a great view of the island.
At least we can see most of the island apart from the bit we came to see. Point Wild is obscured behind the Gnomon, a 300m high islet just off the end of the point. The men of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance originally named it Cape Wild after Frank Wild, their acting commander. It’s subsequently been downgraded to a point, largely because (I suspect) the original cape has been so eroded. The beach where the men launched the James Caird to seek rescue is gone but the rocks in the foreground of Frank Hurley’s photos are still clearly evident.
Thank goodness for Hurley’s images. Without them, we’d long be arguing about which of the three points here was Point Wild. The written descriptions seem to more closely match a description of Cape Belsham to the west – and it too has an island off the point. Of course, there’s a monument to the captain of the rescuing Yelcho on Cape Wild but you can see that only when the ship is in exactly the right position but far away or in the rare times when conditions allow a zodiac cruise or landing.
The temperature is around zero but it doesn’t seem very cold in the bright sunlight. Most of us mill around and take photographs of each other with an Elephant Island backdrop. Then we have to leave to go somewhere where we can actually leave the ship tomorrow morning. As the ship turns towards the south and east we have a good view of the point behind the island. Those with keen eyes and good binoculars claim to have seen the bust on the plinth. The rest of us are simply content to soak up the sun – and try to imagine what this bleak glaciated land must have been like for the shipwrecked men living here for over four winter months in their tattered tents and upturned boat?

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