322 DISCOVERY REPORTS 



erected in 1906 in place of the old Omond House which is now partially demolished. 

 In 1927 a wireless station was built which transmits weather observations to Buenos 

 Aires daily (Plate XII, fig. 2). 



While routine meteorological and magnetic observations absorb most of the time of 

 the staff, from time to time interesting biological observations have been made and some 

 local mapping and sounding has been done in the neighbourhood of the station. 



The staff are relieved annually about the middle or towards the end of summer. For 

 a long time the Argentine gunboat ' Uruguay ' used to make the voyage from Buenos 

 Aires each year, except in the season 1905-6, when Charcot's vessel ' Le Fran^ais ' was 

 employed.^ In more recent years the annual relief has frequently been carried out by 

 means of a whale-catcher from South Georgia. 



THE ARGENTINE CHART 



A chart of the South Orkneys was published in Buenos Aires in 1930. It consists of 

 a general chart of the group with two large-scale insets, one of the western end of Laurie 

 Island including Powell and Saddle Islands, the other of the anchorages in Scotia Bay 

 and Uruguay Cove. It is said to be based on surveys by two Argentine naval officers, 

 I. Espindola (1915) in the 'Uruguay', and A. Rodriguez (1930) in the ' 1° de Mayo'. 

 The work on the western end of Laurie Island and in the two anchorages seems to have 

 been carefully executed but the general chart of the group, as a piece of original work, 

 has little to commend it. It appears to have been taken largely, and not always faithfully, 

 from Sorlle's chart of 1912-13 and together with the large-scale maps, it is sprinkled 

 freely with misplaced and misspelt Scottish and Norwegian names. Bruce 's Wilton Bay 

 for example is called B'? Whitson while Sorlle's Michelsen Island becomes Milkensen 

 Island. There are many other inaccuracies of a similar nature. 



THE WHALERS2 



In recent years the South Orkneys have been visited by a number of whaling expedi- 

 tions. The Antarctic whaling industry did not spread to the South Orkneys until the 

 summer season 1911-12, although an unsuccessful attempt had been made to use the 

 islands as a whaling base in the season 1907-8. As at the South Shetlands the industry 



1 On the return of the first French Antarctic Expedition to Buenos Aires in May 1905 that vessel was 

 bought by the Argentine Ministry of Agriculture and re-named 'El Austral'. Under Captain Lorenzo 

 Saborido she sailed from Buenos Aires on December 29, 1905, carrying, in addition to the relieving staff 

 and stores for their sustenance, materials for the new house. Having called at Ushuaia she reached the 

 vicinity of the South Orkneys on January 30, 1906, a landing being effected on February 2. The 'Austral' 

 remained three weeks at the South Orkneys while the sections of the new house were assembled and 

 erected. She sailed for South America on February 23. The 'Austral', which might have made many 

 voyages to the South Orkneys, was wrecked on the Banco Chico in the River Plate in December 1907. 



^ See Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Research and Development in the Dependencies of the 

 Falkland Islands, pp. 3, 6, 42-3, 49, 57-8. The author is further indebted for details of the whaling industry 

 to Mr Sigurd Risting, Sandefjord, and to reports in the Colonial Office from whaling officers at the South 

 Orkneys. 



