HISTORY OF THE ISLANDS 325 



NORWEGIAN HYDROGRAPHIC WORRi 



The first need of the whalers in their new field was to find harbours where the floating 

 factories might lie in safety and obtain sufiicient fresh water for their boilers. At the 

 same time they wanted a reliable working chart of the entire group, of which only 

 Laurie Island with its off'-lying rocks and islets was known with any accuracy. Corona- 

 tion Island still appeared on the British Admiralty Charts on a scale too small to be of 

 any use to seamen — exactly as the French had left it in 1838 (see p. 316, Fig. 7) — and 

 nothing was known of what dangers to navigation existed around its coast. 



At the end of 1911 the late Captain Fetter Sorlle,- with the whale-catcher 'Powell', 

 was sent on ahead of the ' Falkland ' in order to find her a suitable anchoring place. This 

 expedition appears to have contemplated using the South Sandwich Islands as an 

 alternative base, for Captain Sorlle investigated that group before leaving for the South 

 Orkneys, where at the southern end of Powell Island he appears to have found the 

 anchorage later known as Falkland Harbour. Here the ' Falkland ' lay for about one 

 and a half months during her first season. 



The following season, 1912-13, Captain Sorlle, while employed as gunner of the 

 'Palmer', a whale-catcher belonging to the 'Thule' and under the management of 

 Captain H. G. Melsom, made running surveys of Coronation, Signy, Powell and 

 Fredriksen Islands, plotting in great detail the rocks and islets with which the coasts of 

 all are beset. The resulting chart of the whole group (Fig. 9) was by far the best of any 

 published up to that time, and although apparently indebted to Bruce for Laurie 

 Island, it reflects great credit on the diligence and patience of its author, a whaler 

 working under the arduous and uncomfortable conditions that are characteristic of his 

 occupation. In addition to a number of soundings Captain Sorlle made detailed sketch- 

 plans of certain important harbours and anchorages, notably Ellefsen's Harbour and 

 Falkland Harbour at the southern end of Powell Island, as well as Queens Bay, Paal 

 Harbour, and Palmer Bay'^ in Signy Island. Signy Island, it may be recalled, is the 

 small island adjoining the middle part of the southern coast of Coronation Island, the 

 existence of which was apparently first made known by Matthew Brisbane in his small 

 boats. It appears for the first time, unnamed and very roughly plotted, in Weddell's chart 

 of 1825 (Fig- 4)' ^^^ is ^^'^ named after Captain Sorlle 's wife, Mrs Signy Sorlle. It is 

 perhaps of interest to note here that the Powell Islands of the British Admiralty Chart 

 of 1839 (p. 316, Fig. 7) at last appear in their true form as a single island (Powell Island), 

 as originally charted by Powell himself in 1821. 



1 For details of this section the author is much indebted to Mr Sigurd Risting, Sandefjord, and to a letter 

 from Captain J. R. Stenhouse, Master of the R.R.S. ' Discovery', to the Secretary of the Discovery Com- 

 mittee. Official reports in the Colonial Office from whaling officers at the South Orkneys have also been 

 consulted. 



^ In January 1912, Captain Sorlle, who was gunner of the 'Powell', shot the first whale at the South 

 Orkneys — a Humpback. 



^ There is another and much larger "Palmer's Bay" on the north coast of Coronation Island, which 

 appears in Powell's earliest chart of the group, a fact which Sorlle seems to have overlooked. 



6-2 



