Putting South Georgia on the Map: Duncan Carse’s South Georgia Surveys of 1951-56

The sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia, about 170 kilometres long and up to 30 kilometres wide, lies at the southern end of the Atlantic Ocean, about 2000 kilometres east of Cape Horn. Its icy mountain spine rises nearly 3000 metres out of the ocean, like a misplaced section of the Alps. The island lies well within the cold waters bounded by the Antarctic Polar Front, and more than half of its area is permanently covered by ice and snow. Although South Georgia was visited with increasing frequency after its discovery by Captain Cook in 1775, and was for a long time a busy base for the sealing and whaling industries, a properly surveyed map of the island was not published until 1958. That map resulted from a series of small privately-organised expeditions – the South Georgia Surveys – initiated and led by Duncan Carse. Trendall, a geologist on the Surveys of 1951-52 and 1954-53, puts accounts of the three Surveys (1951-52, 1953-54 and 1955-56) into the context of their leader Duncan Carse's life (1913-2004). In addition there is a chapter which discusses how current conditions on South Georgia differ from those on the island in the 1950s, when it was an important base for both whaling and sealing. The illustrations were mainly selected from those taken during the Surveys.