Fortuna Glacier

Fortuna Glacier

Fortuna Glacier

The Fortuna Glacier is a tidewater glacier at the mouth of Cumberland Bay on the island of South Georgia. It flows in a northeast direction to its terminus just west of Cape Best, with an eastern distributary almost reaching the west side of Fortuna Bay, on the north coast of South Georgia.

The glacier was named in about 1912, presumably after the whale catcher Fortuna. It is the largest glacier on the island, and is notable for two major events in the 20th Century.

1916

In the spring of 1916, Ernest Shackleton with five of his men set sail from Elephant Island seeking rescue for the rest of the stranded crew. The boat, the James Caird crossed 80 miles of storm-tossed sea to be cast onto the shore of South Georgia two weeks later at King Haakon Bay. The boat could not be relaunched and the only habitations were on the other side of the island, so Shakleton and two crewmen set out on foot to cross the mountains of South Georgia, which mountains had never before been explored. Frostbitten and exhausted, their clothing torn and encrusted, they set out into the unknown, unmapped interior across mountains and crevasse-riddled glaciers without equipment. The Fortuna Glacier led them over a great part of the island, enabling them to reach the whaling station at Stromness.

1982

Fortuna Glacier in November

When Argentina militarily occupied the Falkland Islands and South Georgia, the British Armed Forces recaptured the island in 'Operation Paraquet', thereby removing the Argentinian military presence and restoring the island to British Sovereignty. It was decided to land a mountain troop of Special Air Service soldiers on the glacier, to approach Grytviken from the most unlikely direction.

After the troops were landed on the glacier in conditions of extremely poor visibility and gale extreme force winds on 21 April, their conditions deteriorated rapidly still further. During several repeated rescue attempts the following day by a Wessex 3 (Antrim) and two Wessex V (Tidespring) helicopters, the Wessex V aircraft crashed in extreme weather conditions. The Wessex 3, crewed by Lt Cdr Ian Stanley, Lt Chris Parry, Sub Lt Stewart Cooper and PO ACMN David Fitzgerald, succeeded in rescuing all troops and aircrew in an amazing feat of flying and navigation just before dark. On returning to Antrim, the Wessex 3 (which can be seen at the Fleet Air Arm Museum at RNAS Yeovilton in Somerset) held 16 personnel instead of its normal 4 capacity.

References

Gazetteer and Map of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands: Fortuna Glacier