25/3/49
No. 11
152
FALKLANDS GOVERNOR, ON ANTARCTIC TOUR, HELPS UNLOAD STORES
PORT STANLEY, FALKLAND ISLANDS, Friday. - When, on March 20, the Falkland
Islands Dependencies' Survey vessel John Biscoe paid her second visit this season to the base at figny Island in the South Orkneys, the Governor of the Falkland Islands (Mr. Miles Clifford) helped to manhandle two five-cwt. generators from
the ship to the base workshop. The Governor is meking his annual tour of the
Dependencies.
The generators, which were among the additional stores landed, wore taken from
the ship to the shore in a scow and then, lashed to pieces of timber, were each
carried across the rocky terrain to the base. A sack of mail, the last the
base party will receive for at least nine months was also delivered.
The Governor was welcomed by Mr. R.M. Lows, Cambridge University biologist and leader of the base, whose United Kingdom address is 20, Brighton Grove, Whitley Bay, Northumberland. The other members of the base party are Mr. D.H.
Maling, meteorologist, of Fiel House, St. George's Place, York; Mr. J.A. Kendall,
wireless operator, of 20, Gordon Terrace, Mesnwood, Leeds, Yorkshire;
and Mr.
C. Skilling, a Falkland Islander.
In the course of a busy morning, the bose hut, laboratory and post office were inspected by the Governor, the stomp accounts were oudited and the past year's activities and the programmes for the coming season were dicussed. Work at the base was shown to have covered a wide ronge for, in addition to on elephant seal count and a study of their breeding habits, many penguins and giant and snow petrels were ringed. It was recorded that a young petrel ringed at Simy in March, 1943, had been found three or four months later at Fremantle, Australia.
A new activity on the island is the stuly of the incubation period of giant petrel eggs.
Maling, who has already spent over a year at the base, hos, in addition to his routine meteorological work, completed a survey of the island and begun one of Coronation Island. Observations have been kept on the nearby glacier and notes compared with lir. Geoffrey Hattersley-Smith, the glaciologist at the base ot Admiralty Bay, South Shetlands Islands (United Kingdom address is "The Crossways," Cranbrook, Kent).
Some fine water colours of bird-life, the work of Mr. Lows (who is also in
his second year at the base), were much admired.
Early autumn snow has fallen throughout the whole of the John Biscoe's six- hours' visit, cleared audienly as she sailed out of Borges Bay.
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