King Haakon Bay, or King Haakon Sound, is an inlet on the southern coast of the island of South Georgia. The inlet is approximately 13 km (8 miles) long and 4 km (2.5 miles) wide. The inlet was named for King Haakon VII of Norway by Carl Anton Larsen, founder of Grytviken.

Queen Maud Bay Queen Maud Bay is a V-shaped bay 2.5 miles (4.0 km) wide at the entrance, lying immediately north of Nunez Peninsula along the south coast of South Georgia. Roughly charted in 1819 by a Russian expedition under Bellingshausen, it was named p ...

, named for his queen, is nearby. Shackleton Gap, a mountain pass, connects King Haakon Bay to Possession Bay. Cave Cove, which forms part of the bay, is best known as the landing place of

Ernest Shackleton Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton (15 February 1874 – 5 January 1922) was an Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic. He was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of ...

in May 1916 as he sought help for his shipwrecked crew marooned on

Elephant Island Elephant Island is an ice-covered, mountainous island off the coast of Antarctica in the outer reaches of the South Shetland Islands, in the Southern Ocean. The island is situated north-northeast of the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, west-so ...

with the

Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914–1917 is considered to be the last major expedition of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. Conceived by Sir Ernest Shackleton, the expedition was an attempt to make the first land crossing ...

. The '' James Caird'' landed in the cove on 10 May 1916, after its tumultuous voyage from

. While at Cave Cove, the men fed on albatross. Henry McNeish wrote: "We have not been as comfortable for the last five weeks, We had 3 young & 1 old albatross for lunch with 1 pint of gravy which beets icall the chicken soup I ever tasted." Since they had run out of drinking water arriving at Cave Cove, the men immediately went to the small stream there. They had to leave their boat offshore, and the elements tore the rudder off the ''James Caird''. The rudder floated back into the cove later, and thus they were able to repair the boat. From here, they moved to Peggotty Bluff. The voyage is commemorated by a small plaque in the rock at the cove. InSightOfOurGoal-NearingSouthGeorgia

Peggotty Bluff or Peggotty Camp is a

bluff Bluff or The Bluff may refer to: Places Australia * Bluff, Queensland, Australia, a town * The Bluff, Queensland (Ipswich), a rural locality in the city of Ipswich * The Bluff, Queensland (Toowoomba Region), a rural locality * Bluff River (New ...

near the head of King Haakon Bay on the north side. The party camped at the bluff using the upturned ''James Caird'', They named the camp for the Peggotty family in

Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian e ...

' ''

David Copperfield ''David Copperfield'' Dickens invented over 14 variations of the title for this work, see is a novel in the bildungsroman genre by Charles Dickens, narrated by the eponymous David Copperfield, detailing his adventures in his journey from inf ...

'', who lived in a home made from a beached boat. While they were waiting in this location,

Henry McNish Henry McNish (11 September 187424 September 1930), often referred to as Harry McNish or by the nickname Chippy, was the carpenter on Sir Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914–1917. He was responsible for much of the ...

took screws from the boat and put them in the crew's shoes in order that they could walk across ice more easily. During the

South Georgia Survey The South Georgia Survey was a series of expeditions to survey and map the island of South Georgia, led by Duncan Carse between 1951 and 1957. Although South Georgia had been commercially exploited as a whaling station during the first half of ...

, 1955–56, King Haakon Bay was surveyed and the approximate position of the camp deduced. The name Peggotty Bluff was given to the feature now described, which is close to the ITAE campsite.

References

External links

Images of Cave Cove
Bays of South Georgia Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition {{SouthGeorgia-geo-stub

See also

References

External links