González Videla Antarctic Base
Encyclopedia
Waterboat Point
Waterboat Point is the low westernmost termination of the peninsula between Paradise Harbor and Andvord Bay on the west coast of Graham Land. This feature has "island" characteristics, but it is only separated from the mainland at high water and is more usefully described as a "point." The coast...
in Paradise Bay
Paradise Bay
Paradise Bay is a harbour in West Antarctica.It is one of only two ports used for cruise ships to stop on the continent; the other is Neko Harbour....
, is named after Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
an President Gabriel González Videla
Gabriel González Videla
Gabriel González Videla was a Chilean politician. He was a deputy and senator in the Chilean Congress and was President of Chile from 1946 to 1952...
, who in the 1940s became the first chief of state of any nation to visit Antarctica. The station was active from 1951-58, and was reopened briefly in the early 1980s. It is now an "inactive" base, with fuel and supplies in storage in the buildings for emergency use, or in case the base were to be reactivated in the future. Occasional summer visits are made by Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
an parties and tourists.
On the north edge of the station there is a sign identifying Waterboat Point as an official historic site under the Antarctic Treaty.
This was the place where the smallest ever wintering-over party (two men) spent a year and a day in 1921-1922. The two men, Thomas Bagshawe and M.C. Lester, had been part of the British Imperial Expedition, but their particular project, which involved flying a number of aircraft to the South Pole
South Pole
The South Pole, also known as the Geographic South Pole or Terrestrial South Pole, is one of the two points where the Earth's axis of rotation intersects its surface. It is the southernmost point on the surface of the Earth and lies on the opposite side of the Earth from the North Pole...
, was aborted. Nevertheless, they decided to stay over for the winter and made their shelter in an old whaling boat they found on this site. Their time was not wasted, however, because Bagshawe wrote the first scientific study of penguin breeding development. And today the gentoos, probably descendants of the ones he studied, nest in the ruins of the whaleboat shelter.
Sources
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, Antarctica: a Lonely Planet Travel Survival Kit, Oakland, CA: Lonely Planet Publications, 1996. - Stewart, Andrew, Antarctica: An EncyclopediaEncyclopediaAn encyclopedia is a type of reference work, a compendium holding a summary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge....
. LondonLondonLondon is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
: McFarland and Co., 1990 (2 volumes), pp. 394, 1080. - U.S. National Science FoundationNational Science FoundationThe National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
, Geographic Names of the Antarctic, Fred G. Alberts, ed. Washington: NSF, 1980.