Could some one tell me more about Deception Island and other colonies in Antarctica

Question

Could any one tell me the history of colonies or ex-colonies in this southern continent? I am just curious about this subject.

Answer 1

Deception Island is an island in the South Shetland Islands off the Antarctic Peninsula which has one of the safest harbours in Antarctica. A recently active volcano, its eruptions in 1967 and 1969 caused serious damage to the scientific stations there. The only current research bases are run by the Argentine Army and Spain.

Since the early 19th century Deception Island was a favourite refuge from the storms and icebergs of Antarctica. It was first used by sealers, then in 1906 a Norwegian-Chilean whaling company started using Whalers' Bay as a base for a factory ship, the Gobernador Bories. Other whaling operations followed suit, and by 1914 there were 13 factory ships based there.

The station did not actually process whale blubber, that being done on the ships, but instead took the carcasses and boiled them down to extract additional whale oil, using large iron boilers, and storing the results in iron tanks.

Whale oil prices dropped in the Great Depression, making the station uneconomic, and it was abandoned in 1931. Advances in factory ships made shore stations for carcass processing unnecessary, and so it was never reoccupied. 45 men were buried in the station's cemetery, but the cemetery was buried in a 1969 eruption, and the only remaining signs are the rusting boilers and tanks.

Other remains at Whalers' Bay include an aircraft hangar with a bright orange derelict airplane fuselage outside (removed in 2004), and the British scientific station house (Biscoe House), with the middle torn out by the mudflows in 1969.

In the 1940s and 1950s, Argentina contested control of Deception Island with the UK with some removals of the sovereign flag and temporary occupation of the island.

On February 3, 1944 the British established a permanent base on Deception Island as part of Operation Tabarin, and occupied it until December 5, 1967, when a volcanic eruption forced a temporary withdrawal. It was used again between December 4, 1968 and February 23, 1969, when further volcanic activity caused it to be abandoned.

In 1955 Chile inaugurated its station Pedro Aguirre Cerda at Pendulum Cove, to increase the Chilean presence in the sector claimed by that nation.

In 1961 Argentina's president Arturo Frondizi visited to show his country's interest.

In 1963 the American Coast Guard icebreaker Eastwind, WAGB 279, visited Deception Island. There were two scientific stations active, one British and one Chilean. The Chileans had an air strip and flew a DeHaviland Beaver back and forth to Punta Arenas for resupply. There were active fumaroles spewing noxious gasses and some fumaroles had churning volcanic ash in the depressions. The Eastwind ran aground inside the volcano which is likely the only time an American military ship ever ran aground inside an active volcano. The ship refloated with the rising tide.

In 1969 a violent volcanic eruption demolished the Chilean stations Pedro Aguirre Cerda and Gutierrez Vargas.

The volcano has mostly taken care of other attempts to maintain permanent facilities, and as of 2000, there were only two scientific stations still in use, both summer-only: Spain has Gabriel de Castilla, and Argentina its Decepción station.