Shackleton's Argonauts
02 October 2019 | 550 Miles North East Of Ilha De Santao Antao, Cape Verde Islands

Day 118 4pm Wednesday 2nd October 2019 (UTC-1 )
I spent some wonderful time as a five and six year old growing up on Green Island off Cairns ( Far! ) North Queensland. My sister and I were free to roam the Island with our pet kangaroo , Kitchik, under only two conditions. One, that we spent a couple of hours doing correspondence school under the lackadaisical supervision of our mother and two, that we came back home before sunset and in time to listen to the ABC children's hour on our battery powered radio. We were known as Jason's Argonauts and I have to admit the only words I remember of the chorus are Row, Argonauts, row! It was therefore with great delight that a few years later as a Christmas present I was given the book Shackleton's Argonauts, illustrated by the Australian photographer Frank Hurley, describing his epic voyage from Elephant Island to South Georgia resulting in the rescue, without loss, of his entire crew after his ship the Endurance was crushed by a huge iceberg. I suspect the photo above was also in that book. At a much later date Barbara acquired the book The Voyage of The Beagle which again led us to sail through the Southern Channels of Chile including the Beagle Canal and even anchoring behind the low spit across the Canal from the Beagle Glacier where her captain felt some concern to swamping should a large chunk break off.
Now where is all this leading? Well as I was preparing for this trip I was constantly assailed in the press by the Climentologists â that due to unprecedented warming a huge iceberg is about to separate from the Larsen B ice shelf which could contribute to sea level rise and even change the course of ocean currents with devastating consequencesâ. Charles Darwin was the Naturalist aboard the Beagle and I quote from his experiences of 180 years ago.
< In central Chile I was astonished at the structure of a vast mound of detritus, about 800 feet in height, crossing a valley of the Andes; and this I now feel convinced was a gigantic moraine, left far below any existing glacier. Further south on both sides of the continent, from lat. 41 deg to the southernmost extremity, we have the clearest evidence of former glacial action, in huge boulders transported far from their parent source. > ibid.p192
So despite the dire warnings of the Climentologists, icebergs continue to calve off the Antarctic Glaciers, glaciers continue their retreat, the sea level has not risen and mankind has never flourished as it has today.
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