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The photografer Becquer Casaballe sailed around the southernmost seas of the planet. Here are some of the photographs, anecdoteshe and chronicle of what he lived.
The icebreaker Almirante Irízar glides through the Beagle channel amidst the shadows of the evening coming down on the seascape of Tierra del Fuego. The ship has left the port of Ushuaia at sunset to embark on the second stage of the 2006-07 Antarctic campaign, which will take it to the Belgrano II base located beyond the Antarctic Polar Circle to reach a southern latitude of 77.5º, a region of eternal ice and unknown coastlines.
Night has closed in on us. On the command bridge Commander Guillermo Tarapow, the officers on duty, the helmsman and his assistant and the men on the look-out scan every detail of the coastline to ascertain the ship’s position, using the gyrocompasses, the satellite navigator and a sophisticated anti-collision radar.
The next day, already in the Le Maire strait, the warm northern wind has raised a mist that hides the Isla Grande of Tierra del Fuego from our sight and makes the silhouette of the Isla de los Estados barely visible on the starboard side at the ship’s bow. Far away we see the Queen Elizabeth II passing in the opposite direction – it sails at the terrific speed of 29 knots. (*)
Shetland del Sur
Thanks to the fact that the Drake strait has behaved uncommonly well, with only low and tame waves, we have reached the Shetland islands in one piece, the set of islands that runs parallel to the Antarctic peninsula and is separated from the latter by the Mar de la Flota (the Bransfield Strait).
The next stop was at Caleta Potter, a part of the 25 de Mayo island, where the Jubany base lies in the midst of a landscape where the Tres Hermanos (three brothers) hill and an extended glaciar loom large.
The procedure is similar at all the bases: the Grupo Playa (the beach group) is put ashore first. It is responsible for the organization and carrying out of the work on land, strenuous tasks under very harsh climatic conditions.
The materials are unloaded from the holds by means of the classical nets used for bulk loads which can no longer be seen at ports since the advent of the container. Helicopters or motorboats take them ashore to the bases. They return to the ship with refuse: nothing that is discarded stays on land. The protection of the environment is one of the priorities in any Antarctic operation.
Islas Orcadas del Sur
It is said that nobody really owns a place until he has somebody dead buried under his feet whom to remember. At the Orcadas del Sur a modest graveyard with white crosses bears witness to an important part of a history of sacrifices and achievements.
The set of islands named the Orcadas, whose main islands are called Laurie, Montura, Coronación, Signey, Larsen and Inaccesibles, are located 600 nautical miles to the southeast of the Isla de los Estados.
The first Argentine permanent base is established on Laurie island and was created on February 22 of 1904. It was the only one for three decades, and this fact awards legitimacy to the country to consider its beaches, mountains and glaciers part of its territory.
It is a small Antarctic paradise with a rich animal life, comprising small seagulls, petrels, penguins, Antarctic seagulls, skuas and double skinned sea lions. The Argentine base features a complex structure for the development of different activities carried out by the Dirección Nacional del Antártico – Instituto Antártico Argentino.
The island also has several milestones to its credit: in 1904 the first Antarctic post office was installed; in 1927 the first wireless telegraph station started operating; six years later, when the Navy carried out the first census of its staff it brought the first group of tourists to the island and, in 1940, the first radio transmission took off from Laurie island and hooked up with the Buenos Aires province city of Lanús.
To weather the ice
Every seaman of the old school taught that the seas should not be challenged. With the ice it’s almost the same, one shouldn’t go against the ice, rather, one should work with it.
To take a 14,000 tons and 120 meters long ship through seas full of ice requires the mastery of an extremely subtle art of navigation. Experience is needed as well as great sensitivity, that particular hunch that allows to perceive the specific smell of an ice that is too hard for the steel of the cutwater.
Satellital maps are consulted daily and the itinerary of the ship is marked on them from day to day, instant to instant. Glacier expert Beatriz Lorenzo and Capitán de Navío (RE) (retired ship captain) Vicente Federici, a veteran of more than twenty antarctic campaigns, are on board to give their expertise and advice.
The water of the sea is usually at a temperature of 1.5º C, sometimes a bit more, and begins to freeze only at 2º C below zero. “The “young” ice, only about one year old, may be assaulted because it breaks up without complaining. It is very different in the case of ices that have formed a long time ago, they have become hard on account of the constant pressure of the trays, and so it is with the immense icebergs that have fallen off the barriers that may be over 30 meters high.
When the Irizar finally reaches the frozen sea coast, at a distance of 13 nautical miles of the Belgrano II base ( just a dot on the slope of a large unblemished white hill near 77º 52 South and a longitude of 34º 37’ West), one can say that the men have done their work well.
