Ernest Shackleton- a hero! Grytviken

After being dropped off at the museum K and I walked at speed the 15 mins across to the Whalers cemetery where Ernest Shackleton’s body is buried and a Scottish granite headstone marks the spot.
This was slightly fraught with anxiety as we were the only ones walking this way and kept coming across fur and elephant seals that seemed v unhappy by being disturbed and showed this by trying to charge us!!
I wasn’t going to let a few angry seals come between us and seeing my hero’s final resting place!
As tradition we had a whisky toast to Shackleton and also Frank Wild who was his right hand man and who himself had 5 trips to the Antarctic on different voyages.
His ashes we located by a biographer just in 2011 in South Africa and were re- interned in South Georgia next to Shackleton which seems v fitting, in a ceremony attended by his great granddaughter ( I think this is correct).
I felt quite super emotional standing at the graveside of a man I have revered for sometime, especially in such a remote and special place- I felt extremely privileged .... whilst K laughed at me for feeling emotional!! She needs to read more books on Shackleton’s exploits and character.... only she can’t read!!!
After 2 x toasts ( K was amazed as I don’t even like whisky!!) we walked back along the seal strewn shoreline photographing the old whale bones and wrecks.
This was a v productive whaling station in its heyday and sadly was responsible for the “ processing” of 80 whales per 24 hour period. This made my heart v heavy but I am also aware that at the time there weren’t many alternatives to fuel etc and they did use every single part of these beautiful mammals. It felt like an Auschwitz for whales if I can say that.
We didn’t take the official “tour” around the whaling station as we ran out of time but we did spend time reading the info boards at each processing stage whilst looking at the mind blowing equipment rusting as it was in its day.
The museum at Grytviken is highly informative and really needed a whole afternoon to fully appreciate it.
Sadly we ran through this and then to the “post office” where we bought and posted ourselves a post card. At the rear of the post office there were 12 amazing replica glass plates of Frank Hurley’s from the Endurance expedition. We learnt from historian Ed that Shackleton made Hurley smash many of his plate negatives so he wouldn’t be tempted to carry excess weight when they had to abandon the Endurance when it became lost to the ice on the Imperial Trans Antarctic Expedition- imagine the images that were lost??!!! God my heart breaks once more.
Luckily we didn’t have time to watch the film showing the pictorial steps of processing a whale as I think I would have cried all the way home.
Next it was to the little church that housed the whalers library and where Shackleton’s embalmed body was laid out until his funeral was held on March 5th 1922.
We were allowed to ring the bells which was quite hilarious.
By now it really was time to return to the last zodiac to get back to the ship. It had been such an amazing and emotional day and I just wished we had the whole day in Grytviken because there really was too much to see and do for just 3 hours.
Back on board we upped anchor and headed down the coast of South Georgia towards the south eastern tip.
The most fabulous day ever

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/south-georgia

https://en.m.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Grytviken

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_WildRead more