Elephant Island Expedition

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32073, 22 August 1969, Page 15

Elephant Island Expedition

An expedition next year to explore the Elephant Island group in the Antarctic—described as “one of the dwindling number of ‘unknown’ areas in the world”—will probably be the most ambitious to be mounted on a joint service basis for a quarter of a century. Led by Commander M. Burley, of the Royal Navy, 10 men of the services and a small party of civilian scientists will spend five months on the island, which is about the Size of the Isle of Wight and forms part of the South Shetland group. No joint service expedition has ventured so far south before. ; The expedition plans to leave Britain in October, 1970, and be picked up from the island by the Royal Navy’s ice patrol ship Endurance, namesake of Shackleton’s vessel, returning to Britain by air in April of the next year. The scientific activities undertaken will include surveying, geological, glaciological, zoological and botanical work, while a search will also be made for traces remaining Of the occupation by Shackleton’s expedition more than 50 years ago. The first of the only three recorded landings on the beach of the island, mountainous and covered with a permanent ice-cap with the highest peak about the same

height as Snowden, was in April, 1916, by Sir Ernest Shackleton and survivors of his Imperial Transantarctic

Expedition. They reached sanctuary on Elephant Island—so called because of its dense population of elephant seals—in three boats after their expedition ship Endurance had been crushed and sunk in the pack ice in the Weddell Sea. The expedition remained

marooned on a small spit while Shackleton and five companions made their 600mile sea passage for help to South Georgia. Commander Burley, the expedition’s leader, is already familiar with the South Shetland Islands, having dived from Deception Island, spent some time living ashore on Livingstone Island and having taken part in a helicopter rescue on Greenwich Island.