HISTORY OF THE ISLANDS 



323 



was carried on only during the summer months by means of floating factory ships 

 anchored in harbours, roadsteads and sheltered places in various parts of the group, 

 each factory generally being accompanied by two whale-catchers. Although a small land 

 station was built at Borge Bay in Signy Island in 1920-1 , it was used only in conjunction 

 with a floating factory which was responsible for the major part of the oil production 

 (see below, p. 324). 



There have been two periods of whaling activity at the South Orkneys ; the first, which 

 started in the season 1911-12, came to an end with that of 1914-15, when owing to the 

 war the number of floating factories employed in the far southern Dependencies of the 

 Falkland Islands began to fall away considerably owing to losses sustained through 

 enemy action and the diversion of vessels to the business of carrying burning oil from 

 the United States to France and Great Britain.^ The second dates from 1920-1 until 

 1929-30, when with the rapid and highly successful expansion of pelagic whaling this 

 old method of operating from factory ships sheltered in territorial waters was finally 

 abandoned. 



Although whales were generally plentiful enough, the shortness of the season, com- 

 bined with bad weather and difficult ice conditions, so hampered whaling operations on 

 this new field during the first period of its exploitation that it was by far the least 

 profitable of the grounds in Dependencies of the Falkland Islands. Free access to the 

 islands was generally prevented by the presence of pack-ice to the northward, even in 

 early summer, and the factory ships were unable to reach the shelter of the land until 

 the beginning and sometimes the middle of January. In the season 1914-15, when 

 heavy pack extended for a hundred miles north of the group, the ' Falkland' did not 

 reach her anchorage until as late as January 19. Thus, as it was considered advisable to 

 leave this field about the middle of March owing to the approach of bad weather and the 

 possibility of the islands again becoming congested with ice, the time left for actual 

 whaling was exceedingly short. The work of the whale-catchers, strenuous as it is even 

 under the best conditions, must often have been seriously handicapped by fog and gales 

 in a region where stranded and floating icebergs are unusually numerous (Plate XIII). 



Table I 



1 Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Research and Development in the Dependencies of the 

 Falkland Islands, pp. 6, 43. 



