Fortuna Glacier
Encyclopedia
Fortuna Glacier is a tidewater glacier at the mouth of Cumberland Bay
Cumberland Bay
Cumberland Bay, wide at its entrance between Larsen and Barff Points, which separates into two extensive arms that recede inland along the northern coast of South Georgia. Discovered and named in 1775 by a British expedition under James Cook....

 on the island of South Georgia. It flows in a northeast direction to its terminus just west of Cape Best
Cape Best
Cape Best is a cape which marks the west side of the entrance to Fortuna Bay on the north coast of South Georgia. The name dates back to at least 1912 and is well established....

, with an eastern distributary almost reaching the west side of Fortuna Bay
Fortuna Bay
Fortuna Bay is a bay 3 miles long and 1 mile wide, entered between Cape Best and Robertson Point on the north coast of South Georgia. Named after the whaling expedition under C.A...

, on the north coast of South Georgia. Named in about 1912, presumably after the whale catcher
Whaling
Whaling is the hunting of whales mainly for meat and oil. Its earliest forms date to at least 3000 BC. Various coastal communities have long histories of sustenance whaling and harvesting beached whales...

 Fortuna. It is the largest glacier on the island, and is notable for two major events in the 20th Century.

1916

In mid-April 1915, explorer Ernest Shackleton
Ernest Shackleton
Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton, CVO, OBE was a notable explorer from County Kildare, Ireland, who was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration...

's ship (The Endurance) with 27 members of his Antarctic expedition became locked in the polar ice in the Weddell Sea
Weddell Sea
The Weddell Sea is part of the Southern Ocean and contains the Weddell Gyre. Its land boundaries are defined by the bay formed from the coasts of Coats Land and the Antarctic Peninsula. The easternmost point is Cape Norvegia at Princess Martha Coast, Queen Maud Land. To the east of Cape Norvegia is...

 just off the Antarctica. In the spring of 1916, as the ice warmed and drifted north, the ship was crushed. The party used the lifeboats to get to Elephant Island, a desolate, uninhabited atoll at the edge of the Antarctic Peninsula
Antarctic Peninsula
The Antarctic Peninsula is the northernmost part of the mainland of Antarctica. It extends from a line between Cape Adams and a point on the mainland south of Eklund Islands....

. There they were stranded. Shackleton and five others crammed into a lifeboat (named the James Caird
James Caird (boat)
The voyage of the James Caird was an open boat journey from Elephant Island in the South Shetland Islands to South Georgia in the southern Atlantic Ocean, a distance of...

), sailed across the frigid Scotia Sea
Scotia Sea
The Scotia Sea is partly in the Southern Ocean and mostly in the South Atlantic Ocean.-Location and description:Habitually stormy and cold, the Scotia Sea is the area of water between Tierra del Fuego, South Georgia, South Sandwich Islands, South Orkney Islands and the Antarctic Peninsula, and...

 for 800 miles (1,287 km), miraculously reaching South Georgia two weeks later. With great difficulty, they landed on the island's uninhabited west side at King Haakon Bay
King Haakon Bay
King Haakon Bay, or King Haakon Sound, is an inlet on the southern coast of the island of South Georgia. The inlet is approximately long and wide.The inlet was named for King Haakon VII of Norway by Carl Anton Larsen the founder of Grytviken...

. Frostbitten and exhausted, with their clothing torn and crusted with sea salt, it was not feasible to set sail again in the wind, currents and huge seas to one of the whaling stations on the island's east side, which were the only human habitation on South Georgia. To get to there they had to cross unknown mountains and crevasse-riddled glaciers without equipment (at that time, the interior of the island was all but unknown). Unstoppable, Shackleton beached his boat and with two others made his daring traverse of the island, crossing the Fortuna Glacier in the process. Thirty-six hours later, without sleep or rest, they reached Stromness whaling station.

1982

When Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

 militarily occupied the Falkland Islands
Falkland Islands
The Falkland Islands are an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean, located about from the coast of mainland South America. The archipelago consists of East Falkland, West Falkland and 776 lesser islands. The capital, Stanley, is on East Falkland...

 and South Georgia, the British Armed Forces recaptured the island in 'Operation Paraquet
Operation Paraquet
Operation Paraquet was the code name for the British military operation to recapture the Island of South Georgia from Argentine military control in April 1982 at the start of the Falklands War...

', thereby removing the Argentinian military presence and restoring the island to British Sovereignty. It was decided to land a mountain troop of Special Air Service
Special Air Service
Special Air Service or SAS is a corps of the British Army constituted on 31 May 1950. They are part of the United Kingdom Special Forces and have served as a model for the special forces of many other countries all over the world...

 soldiers on the glacier
Glacier
A glacier is a large persistent body of ice that forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries. At least 0.1 km² in area and 50 m thick, but often much larger, a glacier slowly deforms and flows due to stresses induced by its weight...

, to approach Grytviken
Grytviken
Grytviken is the principal settlement in the British territory of South Georgia in the South Atlantic. It was so named in 1902 by the Swedish surveyor Johan Gunnar Andersson who found old English try pots used to render seal oil at the site. It is the best harbour on the island, consisting of a...

 from the most unlikely direction. After the troops were landed on the glacier in conditions of extremely poor visibility and gale extreme force winds on 21 April, their conditions deteriorated rapidly still further. During several repeated rescue attempts the following day by a Wessex 3 (Antrim) and two Wessex V (Tidespring) helicopters, the Wessex V aircraft crashed in extreme weather conditions. The Wessex 3, crewed by Lt Cdr Ian Stanley, Lt Chris Parry
Chris Parry (Royal Navy officer)
Rear Admiral Christopher J. Parry CBE is a British former naval officer who was the first Chair of the UK Government's Marine Management Organisation until 2011.-Education:...

, Sub Lt Stewart Cooper and PO ACMN David Fitzgerald, succeeded in rescuing all troops and aircrew in an amazing feat of flying and navigation just before dark. On returning to Antrim
HMS Antrim (D18)
HMS Antrim was a County-class destroyer of the Royal Navy launched on 19 October 1967. In the mid-1970s, the Royal Navy removed 'B' turret and replaced it with four Exocet launchers.-Falklands Conflict:...

, the Wessex 3
Westland Wessex
The Westland Wessex is a British turbine-powered version of the Sikorsky S-58 "Choctaw", developed under license by Westland Aircraft , initially for the Royal Navy, and later for the Royal Air Force...

 (which can be seen at the Fleet Air Arm Museum
Fleet Air Arm Museum
The Fleet Air Arm Museum is located north of Yeovil, and south of Bristol. It has an extensive collection of military and civilian aircraft, as well as models of Royal Navy ships, especially aircraft carriers. Some of the museum has interactive displays...

 at Yeovilton, Somerset
Somerset
The ceremonial and non-metropolitan county of Somerset in South West England borders Bristol and Gloucestershire to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east, and Devon to the south-west. It is partly bounded to the north and west by the Bristol Channel and the estuary of the...

) held 16 personnel instead of its normal 4 capacity.

See also

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