The then-uninhabited Antarctic island of South Georgia was first discovered in 1675 and was claimed as a British territory by Captain Cook when he landed in 1775. It became an important centre for the whaling industry in 1904 when the Norwegian Carl Antony Larsen set up a whaling company and opened the first whaling station in Grytviken. South Georgia then developed as the world centre for whaling, with six shore whaling stations being built and, at one time, 70% of the whale oil in the world was produced here before the industry declined in the 1920’s due to the rise of open-sea whaling where processing was done on factory ships and, from the 1930’s, only one station remained in action, finally closing in the 1950’s when it was no longer economically viable. The doors were shut and the buildings were abandoned, but left as if their occupants might return. The explorer Shackleton visited the island in 1916 and is buried here. In 2001, a new base was built for the British Antarctic Survey and the issue of the conservation of these historic buildings and the threat posed by their decay and the amount of asbestos they contained has been ongoing.
There is growing interest in this unique piece of history from almost a century ago and what to do with these unique remnants of the whaling industry as the islands are receiving increasing numbers of visitors, tourists, scientists and relatives of those buried in the three cemeteries. Photographer Sam Crimmin recorded the the ruined whaling stations in 2013 in a series of photographs which indicates the scale and the complexity of this industrial heritage and, in June 2014, BBC Four broadcast “Britain’s Whale Hunters: The Untold Story”, presented by Adam Nicholson.
“Pick your way through the buildings now and you find yourself in a forgotten world – mounds of harpoon heads lying rusted together, whale ribs and scapulae everywhere, abandoned tractors and rusted lathes. In the manager’s villa, graffiti tells of Argentine joy in 1982 at recovering their own, every word of it covered with the unequivocal responses of the crews of Royal Navy ships who arrived a few weeks later.
Snow clogs the doorways of the cinema where the whalers used to watch over and over again the few films they had, the dust-filled hall still filled with memories of Elizabeth Taylor and Deborah Kerr. The hospital still has unopened bottles of milk of magnesia and tins of Prickly Heat Powder on the shelves of its half-trashed pharmacy. Stinking fur seals lurk in the radio shack and among the overturned benches of the canteen. In the dormitories, the whalers’ pin-ups still smile winsomely from the walls. Hidden in attic spaces you can find the bowls, ladles and tins of yeast with which the whalers made the fearsome hooch to console themselves on long winter evenings 8,000 miles from home.”
Conservation architect Michael Morrison in the 2014 Volume of Transactions for the Association for Studies in the Conservation of Historic Buildings (ASCHB) described his visit there and the difficulties in coming up with a satisfactory conservation plan due to the scale and condition of the buildings and the amount of asbestos they contain in a remote location where logistics is challenging
The first stage at least has been to record these unique ruins, which are part of British and Norwegian heritage, while the debate on what and how to conserve continues. Menawhile, nature continues to take its course.
