Today we visited Point Wild on Elephant Island. Point Wild is a narrow sand and rock point, with steep tidewater glaciers and cliffs on its edges. It lies on the north coast of Elephant Island (part of the South Shetland Islands) 7 miles west of Cape Valentine.
This small bit of land is named after Frank Wild, the leader of the survivors of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s shipwrecked expedition. 15 men camped here and managed to survive for four months of Antarctic winter before they were rescued by a Chilean naval ship in August 1916. The rescue was orchestrated by Shackleton who sailed from Point Wild to South Georgia in a rigged lifeboat along with 2 other men to get to help while the rest of the crew stayed behind, living in the remaining 2 lifeboats that had been salvaged from the Endurance. They built bunks inside of the upturned ships, drank fresh water from the glaciers and killed Penguins and Seals to survive the winter.
There is a memorial commemorating the captain of the rescuing vessel with an impressive bronze bust to be found here, as well as several inscriptions. We also visited the Chinstrap Penguin Colony there.
In the afternoon we had a behind the scenes tour of the ship, the Galley, the garage where they keep the Zodiacs and Kayaks, the engine room and other areas of the ship that you don’t usually see. We also decided to add some other pictures of the ship here to show our room and the bridge which weren’t part of the tour.
Shawn went to a photo session after dinner where guests can submit a photo and the Nat Geo Photographers give advice on how they would improve the photo. After the photo session we had a lovely sunset. It never really got dark even after the sun set.
Tomorrow we reach the Antartic Peninsula and surrounding islands.