Journeying on from the edge of the world

FIN del Mono, the End of the World. Sailing out from the Argentinian port of Ushuaia, nestled in an amphitheatre of snowcapped mountains, there's a slightly eerie feeling about leaving the planet's southernmost town in one's wake.

But The Irish Times is in good company. Strapped on the deck of this Russian icebreaker is a small Irish wooden boat, the Tom Crean. At all of 23 feet, the craft is a precious cargo. Our destination is King George Island, part of the Southern Shetlands in Antarctica.

It is here, later this week, that it will be launched from the icebreaker the Professor Molchanov on to wild and windy seas for a crew of Irish sailors and mountaineers. Their aim to retrace the route of the polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton.

Just over 80 years ago, Shackleton, a Kildare Quaker, along with Kerryman Tom Crean and Corkman Tim MacCarthy, set sail with three others in what became one of the greatest polar rescues on record.

The rest of their crew on the 1914-17 British Trans Antarctic Expedition were stranded on Elephant Island, after the loss of Shackleton's ship, the Endurance, in pack ice. With even more endurance, the skipper and rescue team battled 800 miles of heavy seas to get help in South Georgia.

As the leader wrote at the time, the ocean south of Cape Horn is known to be "the most tempestuous, storm swept area of water in the world". Even at this early stage, members of South Aris, the Irish Antarctic Adventure, know all about it.

"Talking to God on the great white telephone," was the initial greeting from Mike Barry of Tralee, Co Kerry, one of the crew, after he and his compatriots had set off on their first sea leg last week from Ushuaia for Chile's Puerto Williams, which also, incident ally, claims "southernmost town" status.

Sailing down the Beagle Channel in the expedition's rescue yacht, the Pelagic, the crew were foxed by the tranquillity of the sheltered water; longer and dotted with skerries, but uncannily similar to Bantry Bay. Out beyond Cape Horn into the ocean, the vessel ran into a 14 hour gale.

"It was a baptism of fire," Mike Barry, an experienced sailor, mountaineer and member of the successful 1993 Irish Everest Expedition, told The Irish Times. "I think we can safely say we have all been initiated into the manly art of yachting."

So bad were conditions off Cape Horn that the Pelagic, under the command of round the world yachtsman Skip Novak, was forced to heave to for a time. Seas were "very confused", with gusts of up to 50 knots, according to the team manager, John Bourke.

The expedition flew to the frontier town of Ushuaia just a fortnight ago, having been welcomed in Buenos Aires en route by the Irish Ambassador to Argentina, Mr Art Agnew. They spent a night with the Passionist nuns at Casa Nazareth, and were greeted in Ushuaia's naval headquarters by the port's Argentinian commander.

Until the late 19th century, the only permanent inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, the land of fire, were Yamana Indians. It was in 1519 that the flames from their constant bonfires inspired Ferdinand Magellan to give the region its resonant name.

Ushuaia is a former missionary settlement and penal colony, where the Argentinian government sent many of what it termed its "backsliders". Since 1950, its' naval base has supported Argentine claims to the Antarctic, while postcards on sale of the Malvinas [Falklands] still refer proudly to the islands as Argentinian territory.

There is no such thing as a good forecast in these climes. That's why, even with modern technology, this sea voyage is still such an enterprise, according to Mr Jonathan Shackleton, descendant of the explorer and family historian.

Bidding the team fair winds at a reception in Shackleton Mills on the river Liffey recently, he summed up the challenge as "still as dangerous, still as exciting" as it was eight decades ago. Most significantly, it is final recognition of the forgotten achievements of Irish polar explorers," Mr Shackleton said.

Not just his namesake, not just Crean and MacCarthy, but also Robert McClure of Wexford, who discovered the North West Passage during Arctic trips; Francis McClintock of Dundalk, after whom a mountain in Antarctica is named; and Edward Bransfield of Cork, who was the first European to sight the globe's coldest and most lonely continent, although Russia claims its imperial captain Fabian von Bellingshausen spotted it three days before the Irishman.