NavList:

Hi Frank,

Many years ago, in 1986, when I was part of the Argentinean Navy as part of the mandatory one-year service, I had the opportunity to participate as a sailor of the summer Antarctic campaign. At that time, Argentina had six permanent bases in the region, and once a year the icebreaker "Almirante Irizar" visited every single base to pick up the team that already spent one year or service and leave the crew for the following year. In total, the campaign took around two and a half months during January, February and part of March.

The campaign started in Buenos Aires, Argentina, same port that Shackleton visited in 1914 (which is my home city), but we did not visit the South Georgia Islands because that was only three years after the Falklands war between Argentina and England, and those little islands were part of the battlefield and were under English control.  As you can see in the map below, after crossing the Drake passage, we navigated the Wedell sea and at the southernmost point we visited was the "Belgrano II" base, latitude 77° 52.4' S, which is located pretty close to Vashel Bay, which was Endurance's intended destination just 750 miles short of the South Pole.

At that time, GPS was not yet available so the icebreaker had an inertial navigation system, and also there was a pre-gps system where some satellites past over from time to time and fixed the ship position. As far as I remember, I never saw anyone from the icebreaker crew using a sextant. 

That was an incredible experience for me, including rough seas, high winds and low temperatures (the lowest one was -27 C), so I have a good idea of what Shackleton and his crew had to go through in 1914.

Regarding the movie, I think it deserves more than one and a half stars, because it is not easy to tell two stories that happened 100 years apart in just 90 minutes.

Thanks !!

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