THE SOUTH ORKNEY ISLANDS 



By James W. S. Marr, M.A., B.Sc. 



(Plates XI I-XXV; text-figs, i-io) 



INTRODUCTION 



ACCOUNTS of a running survey of the South Sandwich Islands and of survey opera- 

 xV. tions in other Dependencies of the Falkland Islands have already appeared in the 

 Discovery Reports} On the second commission of the R.R.S. 'Discovery 11', 193 1-3, 

 according to instructions received from the Discovery Committee, the month of 

 January 1933, was set aside for survey work. The instructions were that we should make 

 a survey of the South Orkney Islands ; or that if we found the ice or weather conditions 

 around that group unfavourable we should go on to the South Shetland Islands and con- 

 tinue there the survey work begun during the first commission of the R.R.S. 'Dis- 

 covery 11'.^ 



The last months of 1932 were occupied in making a hydrological and planktonic 

 survey of the waters of the Falkland sector of the Antarctic, and in the course of that 

 work we found the South Orkney Islands to be completely free of ice at the unusually 

 early date of November 22. The edge of the Weddell Sea pack-ice lay seventy miles to 

 the south of them. They were ice-free when we returned to them on January 2, 1933, 

 and between that date and January 29 a hydrographic survey of the group was made. 



Prior to the survey of 1930 by the R.R.S. ' Discovery II ' the Admiralty Chart of the 

 South Sandwich group was based upon the work, a century old or more, of Cook and 

 Bellingshausen. Although the shape and position of the South Orkneys were based 

 upon more recent work, in the latest Admiralty charts^ of the group there still appeared 

 the legend: "Caution is necessary in approaching the South Orkneys as their charting 

 is only approximate." 



In compiling the history of these islands I was fortunate in obtaining from 

 many quarters valuable assistance which I have now much pleasure in acknowledging. 

 Among the many who have helped I wish first of all to thank Lieutenant-Commander 

 R. T. Gould, R.N. (Retd.), whose peculiar knowledge of the more out-of-the-way facts 

 of Antarctic history has been placed unreservedly at my disposal and whose unpublished 

 notes, now in the possession of the Hydrographic Office, on the early cartography of the 



' Kemp, S., and Nelson, A. L., 1931, The South Sandwich Islands, Discovery Reports, ui, pp. 133-90. 

 Chaplin, J. M., 1932, Narrative of Hydrographic Survey Operations in South Georgia and the South Shetland 

 Islands, 1926-30, Discovery Reports, in, pp. 297-344. 



- Kemp, S., 1932, The Voyage of the R.R.S. 'Discovery 11 ': Surveys and Soundings, Geog. Journ., lxxix, 

 pp. 168-81. 



^ Chart No. 3175, Admiralty, March 7, 1901, corrected to June 3, 1927. 



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