"SAVAGE and horrible... Not a tree was to be seen nor a shrub even big enough to make a tooth pick."
Five days after their landfall on South Georgia, the Irish Antarctic Expedition has already taken issue with Capt James Cook's description of the island which he named after King George III of Britain in 1775. "Spectacular" and "breathtaking" are the adjectives now most frequently used as the team prepares to repeat the Shackleton mountain traverse of 1916.
When Cook's account was first published in 1777, it precipitated a rush of British and US sealing ships in search of fur skins and elephant seal oil. Now protected under the Antarctic Treaty, fur seal numbers are so large as to be aggressive. "They have two big molars and are very territorial," the expedition's manager, John Bourke, told The Irish Times yesterday, speaking from the island by satellite telephone.
Base for a small British military garrison since the Argentine incursion of 1982, South Georgia was the location for the Antarctic's first whaling station in 1904. By 1917 there were six stations recording an annual catch of up to 8,000 of the cetaceans. Its waters no longer run red with blood, however, as the whaling museum in its capital, Grytviken, testifies. The hulks of abandoned vessels in the harbour are also a stark reminder of a once thriving trade. Whatever about the pressure on the stocks, the working conditions on board some were appalling.
A report from the South Georgia administrative officer to the Falklands Colonial Secretary in 1959 describes how bunks were constantly soaking, as "sea water and oily blood dripped almost continuously, and occasionally poured through the deckhead into the aftermess". There were no proper toilets, no wash basins aboard, always the smell of rotting seal blubber, and crews rarely changed their clothes in two months.
The Irish Antarctic Expedition rescue yacht, Pelagic, which berthed in Grytviken harbour on Saturday night, is one of only two seaworthy vessels on the quay. The second, a 28 foot yacht named Curlew, has been at sea with its owners, Tim and Pauline Carr, for 16 years, during which time it sailed up the Irish west coast. By coincidence, the pair had first met Jamie Young of the expedition back then, around 1988.
The depression which the expedition had been expecting last week as it approached South Georgia came with "some ferocity", the joint leader, Frank Nugent, said yesterday. "It hemmed us in where we were in Cooper Bay on the south east tip for a couple of days, but we took out skis, moved up on to the glacier and picked out climbing routes."
Sodden gear - soaked in the storm that resulted in three capsizes and the eventual sinking of the Shackleton replica lifeboat, Tom Crean - has been dried out, in between williwaws or wind squalls and light snow flurries.
The Pelagic crew has also visited some of the island's abundant colonies of adelie, chinstrap, gentoo, macaroni and king penguins. The island's 2,000 reindeer, which were first introduced by whalers in 1911, are restricted to two valleys by glaciers.
Greetings have continued to pour in by e-mail from all over the world, via Nichiai Computers in Tokyo and the Inmarsat M satellite system provided by the sponsors, Esat Digifone.
Among those following the expedition's progress are the sixth class pupils of Scoil Mhichil Naofa in Athy, Co Kildare, and individuals in Britain, Norway, India and Shackleton. After a BBC World Service broadcast, the crew even got a call on Saturday from an Englishwoman named Patricia. Her surname, she said, was Shackleton. She is the Irish polar adventurer's niece.
