Christmas
From South Georgia Museum
Although most of us enjoy and appreciate being away from the excessiveness that Christmas brings, decorating the whalers church is a South Georgia tradition and everyone on base, fortified with mulled wine and mince pies, comes together to hang tinsel and lights and decorate the tree.
Base Commander Ali Massey has put together a time lapse movie of the church being decorated. This can be viewed through the GSGSSI website at www.sgisland.gs It is really very good and well worth a look.
Passengers from cruise ship Hanseatic came ashore for a Christmas Eve service and everyone on base was invited to join them. It was a different experience for everyone listening to the service being spoken in German, and singing in four different languages – German, English, Spanish and Philipino.
Christmas Day dawned bright and sunny but with ever increasing winds. Hanseatic, anchored out off Hope Point, waited patiently for the wind to die, however with gusts reaching over 100mph, they decided to call off their Christmas Day landing. They were joined out in Cumberland Bay east by ships Bremen and Prince Albert 2 who had come in to escape high winds at sea. From the safety of our lounge on base, it was spectacular to watch great walls of white water being whipped up by the wind and carried across the bay.
I am just reading Into the frozen South by Scout Marr who was on board Quest with Shackleton in 1922, and he writes about their Christmas day sailing to from Rio to South Georgia. He writes:
Christmas Day, down there in southern latitudes, where it was officially mid summer, dawned bleak and grey and threatening. The wind during the night had increased to a very good imitation of a real gale and the ship was showing precisely what she could do in the way of uneasy motion... A great formidable grey bearded comber swung up out of the obscurity, gathering weight as it came; it towered high, growing- always growing, then fell right a top of me, washed me clean off my feet and promised to wash me over board; but with a natural desire for a long life I clung on...By breakfast time she was heaving herself about in an unimaginable fashion, so much so that it was impossible to keep anything on the table... The Boss gave orders that the impossible was not to be attempted... and the actual ceremonial of Christmas was wisely postponed.
I can imagine the passengers here on Christmas Day could probably write much the same!
So even though we got to enjoy our Christmas dinner on base with everyone else, we had almost no time over the next few days to see anybody as we welcomed 8 ships in 5 days. It was hectic and there was no time for anything other than cleaning and restocking the shop in between each ship. The new year break was never more welcome.
Happy New Year to all our supporters!
Ainslie Wilson