Midnight Ice
As my old Sandhurst Sergeant-Major might have observed, if you do not feel a mounting sense of anticipation and excitement as you sail south to Antarctica you are probably on the wrong adventure!
Tabular Iceberg, Antarctic Zone of Convergence
Steaming south across the 620 miles of the Drake Passage, you will be accompanied by albatrosses and petrels. Almost certainly, you will also see pods of humpback whales, similarly travelling south as they head for their summer breeding grounds in the krill-rich waters of the Antarctic Ocean. But perhaps most excitingly, you will get your first glimpse of ice: first small bergs already mostly melted away but then increasingly large, tabular blocks that seem enormous - and often are. You have now arrived in the ‘zone of convergence’ where the temperatures tumble and a completely different weather system takes control.
This image records my first encounter with Antarctica - even though land still lay 150 miles further on. I felt there was something otherworldly about this vast iceberg that had broken off the main continental shelf and was now drifting into oblivion - unique, awe-inspiring and ghostly in its silence and decay.
At this latitude - about 60 degrees south - and in the short Antarctic summer from November to January, some daylight is always present. I made the image just before midnight with the late sun just catching the top of the berg against the luminous darkness of the evening sky. A print now hangs on my office wall - a lasting reminder of an extraordinary encounter in the midnight sun.
The ocean waters that lie between the southern tip of South America at Cape Horn and the northernmost fringes of the Antarctic Peninsula are amongst the most unpredictable and storm-ridden in the world. For centuries, the white continent remained undiscovered by explorers deterred by the seemingly empty wastes of the Southern Ocean and the violent seas generated by the convergence of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
It was not until 1773, that an English expedition led by Captain James Cook sailed into Antarctic waters and saw southern ice for the first time. And it was not until 1820 that Captain Thaddeus von Bellingshausen, leading a Russian expedition, reported seeing 'an ice shore of extreme height' and is now credited with being the first European actually to set eyes on the Antarctic continent.
Today, while many people head to Antarctica to see the remarkable wildlife - the penguins, the huge range of pelagic seabirds, and the whales - I think it is the ice in all its astonishing forms, that provides the most enduring memories.
