The British claimed and occupied the South Atlantic Falkland Islands in 1833. From there it was natural that Britain would lead the exploration of Antarctica and still today man the permanent year round stations that make scientific study possible if still not entirely safe. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
This is the first stamp issue of the Territory and they chose to show the icebreaker ship. A fitting way to show how dependent the stations were then on these ships that supplied them and rescued them when things got rough. What a welcome sight their arrival must have been.
Todays stamp is issue A1, a half penny stamp issued by the British Antarctic Territory on February 1st, 1963. It was a fifteen stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth 90 cents used.
In 1908 the British King issued his claim on territory in the not human occupied continent of Antarctica. It was a time of many Antarctic Expeditions that sought to map the continent and race for the South Pole. One was the Imperial trans Antarctic Expedition of 1914-17 lead by Sir Ernest Shackleton. Their icebreaker, HMS Endurance was itself broken up by the strong ice and the crew was marooned on an ice floe. They hoped that the ice flow would take them to an island where provisions were stored. When it didn’t, they loaded the lifeboats and made a perilous journey in rough seas to Elephant Island where food was stored but there still wasn’t a manned base. Remember wind was high, water was rough and the temperature never went above freezing. Shackleton then decided to take a few of his best sailors in one of the lifeboats and make the 700 mile journey to South Georgia Island that was manned and therefore a rescue could be organized. He miraculously made it and convinced the Chilean Navy to lend a tugboat to go back to Elephant Island and save the rest of his crew. They did!
In 1922 with a new ship, HMS Quest, Shackleton was back in South Georgia about to start a new expedition with many of the same crew. He died there of a heart attack and his wife wired that he should be buried their in the desolate place near the rough seas he loved. In 2010, descendants of Frank Wild had his remains reinterred on South Georgia Island on the right side of Shackleton, as he had been his right hand man.
The territory is now two year round bases and a summer manned science stations and heritage center. The Hailey base concentrates on the Earth’s atmosphere and was the first to discover the ozone hole. The building is built on stilts with skis so it can be moved to stay ahead of snowfall and cracking ice. The Rothera station is the administrative center and concentrates on marine biology. It now has an airstrip with regular flights from the Falklands on a Dash 7 aircraft. The heritage center, Port Lockroy open during summers welcomes tourists and has the worlds most southerly post office. It gets 10,000 visitors a year who stay shipboard.
The ship on the stamp is the MV Kista Dan. It was built as an icebreaker in Denmark in 1952 and was used in Antarctica from 1953-58. The sip later passed through different hands and was broken up in Turkey in 1998. The current British icebreaker HMS Protector, entered service in 2011.
Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast Sir Ernest Shackleton. It is said that other explorers were better at science but when things got rough, it was better to be with Shackleton. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.