Silverseas vs Seabourn Anarctica

[machotspur]

1 hour ago, Fletcher said:

Be aware that hardly any cruise passengers are able to land on Elephant Island.  The best you can hope for is a view of the Shackleton camp site and the memorial to the captain who rescued the crew.  It's unbelievably bleak.

 

If you want a tour of British possessions there are two great options - Silversea usually do a reposition cruise from Ushuaia to Cape Town via the Falklands, South Georgia and Tristan da Cunha with a sail-by of Gough Island, the world's remotest World Heritage Site.

 

Also, the British cruise operator Noble Caledonia have a stunning trip from Ushuaia to the Falklands, South Georgia, Tristan, St Helena and Ascension.  We did a version of this a few years ago.  The cruise now continues to the Bijagos Archipelago in Guinea-Bissau and disembarks in Dakar, Senegal.  

 

Thank you very much for this.

 

We're certainly aware of the unpredictability of landings on many of the locations on this itinerary, however I wasn't aware that Elephant Island was that unlikely.

 

At worst I would be content to see 'both ends' of the James Caird voyage, just to get a feel for the extreme conditions that Shackleton, Worsley et al endured. (Although I recognise that they landed on the opposite side of South Georgia to the cruise ships).

 

We've been trying to do this itinerary for several years and had to cancel for a range of reasons . Hopefully this one sticks, and maybe we can then consider some of the really interesting other options you have advised.  

       

    

[Fletcher]

2 hours ago, machotspur said:

 

Thank you very much for this.

 

We're certainly aware of the unpredictability of landings on many of the locations on this itinerary, however I wasn't aware that Elephant Island was that unlikely.

 

At worst I would be content to see 'both ends' of the James Caird voyage, just to get a feel for the extreme conditions that Shackleton, Worsley et al endured. (Although I recognise that they landed on the opposite side of South Georgia to the cruise ships).

 

 

    

Here's a shot of the Shackleton site on Elephant Island which I took from the Seabourn Quest.  You can see the monument.  It's very treacherous around here, though I have heard of a Silversea party doing a zodiac tour and getting ashore.  One of our expedition team was Trevor Potts who sailed on the replica James Caird voyage.

Edited May 1, 2021 by Fletcher

[jpalbny]

We were at Elephant Island in January 2020 and had great weather. Still, we only did a zodiac tour and did not go ashore. Honestly I am not sure where you could even land - Point Wild (in Fletcher's photo) is the only flat-ish part of "land" there and it's covered in chinstrap penguins. It was incredible to see and I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

 

Here is a close-up from our zodiac. Not a great landing site!

 

 

And an overview of the "coast" so to speak. Not any other places to land. Point Wild is barely visible just above sea level, in the lower right of this shot, to the right of the rock in the foreground.

 

[machotspur]

Fletcher & jpalbany - thank you for this info & photographs - very interesting.

 

I'm in awe that  in 1915 the whole crew of Endurance were able to cross the Weddell Sea and disembark their small rowing boats onto Elephant Island, (and all of them off again on Shackleton's return from South Georgia) yet today one can't find a suitable landing spot, or weather conditions 😉.

 

As an aside I was fortunate - in 2016 - to be a guest of Silversea for a viewing at the Royal Geographical Society in London, of Frank Hurley's original glass plate and celluloid photography of the (ill fated ?) Shackleton expedition/voyage(s). It was truly awesome.

 

Whilst not in anyway comparable to the exhibition the accompanying book - The Enduring Eye - is still available online for anyone interested. 

   

[Stumblefoot]

6 hours ago, machotspur said:

I'm in awe that  in 1915 the whole crew of Endurance were able to cross the Weddell Sea and disembark their small rowing boats onto Elephant Island, (and all of them off again on Shackleton's return from South Georgia) yet today one can't find a suitable landing spot, or weather conditions 😉.

The level of the sea at Frank Wild’s chosen site is dramatically different today than it was over 100-years ago.

 

Here are a couple of different shots to compliment JP’s.

[Fletcher]

Fascinating shots of this place from JP and Stumblefoot.  So difficult to get to and Shackleton and his crew were desperate to land. Anywhere.  One of my passions is the rather eventful voyage of HMS Bounty in 1788-89 and I've always wanted to set foot on Tofua, Tonga, where Bligh camped immediately after the mutiny and where one of his crew was killed in a skirmish with locals.  Like Elephant Island, that's also virtually impossible to visit and the cave where Bligh and his men sought brief shelter has long since disappeared.  Why don't things just stay as they were? 

Edited May 2, 2021 by Fletcher

[TPAtravelfan]

We did the inaugural Antarctic cruise on the Seabourn Quest in 2013 and are booked again in December of 2021.  After reviewing several expedition lines and Silversea itineraries, we decided to do the Quest again.  We enjoyed the expedition-style landings in Antarctica combined with the luxury cruise trappings.  With Regard to the Falklands, I've been on 4 cruises that included a stop there on the itinerary.  Only one made it.  The tender-served ports are notoriously susceptible to wind and it is windy quite often, forcing cancellation.