The SGHT museum
We walked back down to the SGHT museum. Outside the museum was a collection of harpoons, harpoon guns, sealers pots and other paraphernalia from Grytviken’s past.
Inside the museum we spent some time looking at the exhibits. Lastly we went into the shop and helped SGHT by buying some of their newly arrived T-shirts.
The Whaling Station
The SGHT had arranged for walking tours of the site and the final tour of the whaling station itself was just leaving.
The tour was led by the curator of the museum who was a recent graduate of St Andrews University. She was on a six month secondment to the museum. As we walked around the whaling station she explained what the various parts were.
The large open space had once been covered with wooden decking and was where the whale carcasses were dragged ashore to be processed. Three men would strip (flense) a whale carcass on this slipway in less than 20 minutes before the carcass was moved further up the slipway to be processed.
At the beached whaler we learnt the catcher catchers would kill the whales, inflate their carcasses and move on for more kills. The number of holes down the side of the boat indicated just how many whales would be killed and then tied on before the catcher returned to Cumberland Bay. The Petrel could tow up to 14 dead whales at a time.
The workers at Grytviken
At the ‘back’ of the machinery was the one remaining barracks where the workers slept. This was the ‘New Barracks’.
All that remains of the kitchen are the ovens just outside of the barracks. The other barracks (the ‘Russian Barracks’) are now gone. In this barracks the men slept 12 to a room and their showers were outside of the building.
The men signed up for 7 day working of 12 hours a day. After perhaps a couple of seasons they would have earned enough to buy a business or a farm back home. The only entertainment was the cinema as alcohol was banned. This didn’t stop the whalers from making drinks from cologne or anything else that was alcoholic.
The storage shed still stands but is unsafe to enter and still holds all the spare parts, nuts, bolts etc. to keep everything running at the station. Along the path that we had walked from the cemetery had been the the pigsty and the butcher’s hut – all gone now.
In the Summer over 400 men worked at the station. In the Winter a skeleton staff would remain to make sure that heavy snowfall didn’t damage the buildings or the boats.
The Winter crew did have time on their hands and often played football against other Winter crews for the other stations as well as using the ski-jump on the hills at the side of the church.
Back to Fram
We finished the walk at the side of the museum and joined the other passengers queuing by two beached catcher boats to board a Polar Circle boat back to the Fram.
Once back on board Fram we learnt that the scheduled Hurtigruten organised trip to a farm on the Falklands had been cancelled but there would be a new tour of geological sites added to the programme.
The bad weather was expected to continue and all the kayaking planned for later in the day were now cancelled.
While we were at lunch Fram had recovered all her remaining passengers and set sail around South Georgia for our second landing of the day at Stromness.