Southern Ocean Britain's Treasure Islands

My name is Stewart McPherson. I'm an explorer and naturalist.

I've climbed dozens of unexplored mountains

and discovered many new species.

And yet, the journey I've always wanted to make

is to the most remote parts of Britain.

And I mean remote.

Not the islands of Scotland or the mountains of Wales,

but the UK Overseas Territories.

14 islands and archipelagos scattered all across the seven seas,

they have seven times the land area of the UK.

Some are uninhabited, but 350,000 people live on the others,

people who have voted to remain part of the United Kingdom.

I read about these far-flung places when I was a child

and this was my treasure map.

Not to hoards of gold and silver but something even more special -

untold riches of wildlife and unique cultures.

I wanted to stand on the biggest penguin colonies on the planet.

I wanted to dive on the world's richest coral reefs.

And I can do all that without leaving Britain.

No single person has ever explored all 14 overseas territories

and that is just too much of a challenge

for any explorer to resist.

So I'm going to follow my childhood treasure map

right the way across the globe

to discover the furthest reaches of Britain.

On this journey, I'm visiting the wild Southern Atlantic.

I'll go to the Falkland Islands,

South Georgia

and Antarctica,

but first to the most remote inhabited island in the world -

Tristan da Cunha.

To get there, I need to head to South Africa,

to Cape Town.

From here, a fishing trawler goes out to Tristan

just four times a year and I plan to hitch a ride.

But when I reach Cape Town, I get some bad news.

My ride, the trawler Edinburgh,

is in dry dock for repairs

and clearly going nowhere.

Well, the only other way to get to Tristan da Cunha

is by chartering a private yacht.

So far, I've contacted about 20 yacht companies

and only one has actually said they are willing to take me out

to Tristan because it is so far out and remote in the South Atlantic.

Strangely, no-one actually even seems to actually know how long

it's going to take to reach the island, but I guess we're

going to find out because this now is our only option to go there.

2,800km of open ocean lie between us and Tristan

along the Roaring Forties,

a latitude well-known for its bad weather.

At first, the journey goes well.

But then we get a real surprise -

the winds drop and the sea becomes flat calm.

Not great news for a sailing vessel.

Well, this is our seventh day out of Cape Town and frustratingly,

it's our third day with pretty much no wind at all.

The sea is like glass and pretty much flat

and the sails are just flapping limply in the breeze.

We've still got at least 1,300km or so

right in that direction to reach Tristan da Cunha

and all we can really do is just chug along at 5km/h or 6km/h

with the diesel engine.

It's a bit worrying because we've only actually got about three

or four more days' worth of diesel left.

And the weather shows no sign of changing.

INDISTINCT RADIO MESSAGE

Eventually we run out of diesel, so we're dead in the water.

I'm running out of things to read and I've forgotten my razor.

Every day, radio reports tell us to expect wind,

but out here on the ocean there's not a breath of air.

This is so completely different to how I imagined the South Atlantic.

I came here with expectations of roaring winds

and mountainous rolling waves and oceans,

but this is now our 12th day out of Cape Town

and as you can see, it's dead calm.

It's the seventh day of calm that we've had.

And it's actually this waiting, this endless waiting

that's the hard thing, the real test of patience.

We've been at sea for over two weeks

and at last, clouds are starting to build and bring the promise of wind.

This is more like the Roaring Forties,

and it means we are finally moving again.

And at last, we can see Tristan on the radar.

And finally, there it is.

Well, it's our 18th day out of Cape Town

and I can't possibly tell you how relieved I am to see land -

Tristan da Cunha.

What this journey really shows is that how today

we have completely lost context of distance.

It's impossible to grasp the size of these oceans.

2,800km might seem just a few centimetres on a map

or a few hours flying in a jumbo jet, but being out here,

you just get the sense of how enormous the Atlantic is

and how impossibly remote this place really is.

We've arrived at dusk and so we anchor offshore for the night.

This is actually a group of islands -

Nightingale and Inaccessible islands are nearby.

And further off lies Gough Island.

They're all volcanic islands

and I begin my exploration on Tristan itself.

Well, after three weeks at sea, we've finally made it.

Here we are - welcome to the most remote

inhabited island in the world.

There's only one settlement here - Edinburgh Of The Seven Seas -

home to 270 Tristanians, with everything you might want.

There's even a supermarket, the only shop on the whole island.

A chance to replace my razor, but it's closed.

And there's a bus service.

A bumpy ride of a mile or so to The Patches,

where the Tristanians farm the rich volcanic soil.

These fields provide for many of the islanders' needs.

They have to -

a supply vessel only calls here a few times a year.

The fields are farmed communally and make the islanders

self-sufficient in potatoes, their staple crop.

The islanders also keep sheep and cows.

A familiar scene in an unfamiliar place.

It just strikes me that this place is like a beautiful old

fishing and farming village.

Obviously a working village, but it's just like a little piece

of England that has been plucked out

and thrown down to the South Atlantic.

It feels just like home, except, of course, for the volcano.

The island was garrisoned by the British in 1816

to stop the French from using it to rescue Napoleon,

exiled on Saint Helena some 2,000km away.

After Napoleon died,

a corporal in the Royal Artillery, William Glass, decided to stay

and founded the first permanent settlement on the island.

His descendants are still here.

Others joined the colony over the years,

but there are still only seven surnames on the island.

Just as the rich volcanic soils sustain the islanders,

so do the rich waters that surround the island.

On those rare days when the weather looks set fair,

the men are awoken from their beds and called to the fishing boats.

The sea is incredibly rich and supports huge colonies of sea birds.

Southern Antarctic fur seals also thrive in the rich waters.

There are plenty of fish here,

but the real treasure is lobsters.

They'll be exported all over the world

and this makes Tristan economically self-sufficient.

And unlike the rampant overexploitation that afflicts most

ocean fisheries, the islanders are careful to conserve their resources.

Every lobster is measured.

Any that are too small are thrown back.

It seems to be working and the catch looks to be sustainable.

Surrounded by rich waters, Tristan is crucial for sea birds.

These are Atlantic yellow-nosed albatrosses.

They range far and wide over the ocean

but they only nest on the islands in the Tristan group.

High above the settlement on the slopes of the volcano

is a plateau that looks like something from the lost world.

It's covered in dwarf tree ferns, unique to the island group.

This is where the Atlantic yellow-nosed albatrosses

come to court each other.

And raise their single chick.

The other islands in the Tristan group are uninhabited,

except for the odd weather station.

They seem even more like a paradise for naturalists.

Southern Antarctic fur seals have their own freshwater shower.

And sheltered coasts to raise their pups.

They are joined by some very charismatic penguins.

90% of the world population of northern rockhoppers

also nest on this tiny group of islands.

These islands are also wonderful places to watch evolution in action.

This is the Tristan thrush, an ancient colonist

from South America which has now evolved

into a species found nowhere else.

And it's also evolved some very odd habits for a thrush...

..a taste for meat.

It feeds on penguins by pecking at open wounds,

nibbling flesh and drinking blood.

It seems macabre, but there was an opportunity to make

a living here and natural selection simply exploited it.

Island evolution has twisted a songbird into a carnivore.

My time is far too short for this wonderful group of islands

but before I go, I've got one last duty to perform on Tristan.

It's Queen's Day,

a typical English fete held nearly 10,000km from England.

I've been asked to be a judge for the competitions.

First, the all-important potato competition.

It's like an aeroplane.

This is more like it - a chocolate cake competition!

After ten cakes, this one is our winner.

Fantastic taste and form.

And finally, I can't escape the welly-throwing event,

though, throwing anything doesn't come naturally to me.

LAUGHTER

I'm truly sorry to leave,

but I need to travel to the other side of the South Atlantic,

to the Falkland Islands some 4,000km from Tristan

and 600km from the coast of South America.

They're a treasure trove of natural history and have drawn

some of the world's greatest explorers and naturalists.

I'm starting my journey here by following in the footsteps

of one of the greatest of all -

my own personal hero, Charles Darwin.

When he arrived in the Falklands on his round-the-world voyage,

he was at a low ebb.

There was still three years of seasickness and bad food

ahead of him and the Falklands did little to cheer him up.

Darwin explored much of the landscape of the islands

by horseback, but he had a really miserable time while he was here.

It rained and hailed pretty much throughout his entire stay,

which he hated, and also he had to camp on these cold, wet bogs.

Nor was he impressed with the wildlife.

He was bullied by a penguin when he blocked its path to the sea.

And he was robbed by the smartest birds on the islands -

striated caracaras, the world's most southerly bird of prey.

Poor old Darwin didn't have much luck with the birds...

Hey, give that back!

He got dive-bombed and these striated caracaras

stole his hat, his compass and his leather bag.

And as you can see, one has just made off with some of my notes.

They're scavengers,

they're attracted to anything that they're not familiar with.

They want to take it back to their nests and explore.

I better get my notes back.

Come on, you! Come on.

HE LAUGHS

Come on!

Come on!

They love anything shiny and while my back was turned,

they even emptied my wallet and stole £10 worth of coins.

I'm beginning to know how Darwin felt.

But one animal did intrigue Darwin,

though it's an animal I won't see on my visit here -

the Falklands wolf, or warrah.

This is one of the last remaining warrah skulls.

Even before Darwin visited the Galapagos Islands

and studied the famous finches there, he noted differences

in the populations of the warrah across the islands of the Falklands.

These rudimentary ideas of evolution built up in his mind

and no doubt contributed to the eventual publication

of On The Origin Of Species.

Darwin also recorded that the warrah was in swift decline.

When he visited the Falklands,

he noted that people were killing it for fun, for fur

and also because people feared that it could kill sheep and cattle.

He wrote that all you needed was a small

piece of meat in front of you and the warrah was so tame

that it would come up and try and get at that meat,

and then in your other hand you could have a knife

and could easily kill the animal.

Unfortunately, by the time he left the Falklands,

he predicted that the species would soon be extinct.

And he was right.

Shortly after his visit, the warrah disappeared from history.

When Darwin explored these islands more than a century

and a half ago, they were already changing.

He described herds of cows and horses and by the time of his visit,

they had already eaten much of the original flora.

Today, large herds of sheep are still grazing the landscape.

To get a glimpse of the original Falklands, I need to visit

one of the hundreds of offshore islands.

Kidney Island is only a few hundred metres from the mainland

yet has no grazers.

It's covered in huge tussocks of grass.

These hummocks are incredibly fragile.

They've been cut down for fodder for hundreds of years

and burnt and grazed heavily, and now they've completely

disappeared from most of the islands.

These tussocks provide shelter for nesting birds.

At sunset, 100,000 pairs of sooty shearwaters

return to Kidney Island to their nests amongst the clumps of grass.

In the past,

this spectacle was repeated across much of the Falklands.

It was said that the sky turned black

with the sheer numbers of birds.

The Falklands are close to the rich seas of the Subantarctic,

so an important nesting site for many sea birds.

70% of all the black-browed albatrosses on the planet

come to the Falklands to rear their chicks.

That's around half a million pairs.

Albatrosses are most at home over the open ocean.

They think nothing of flying to feeding grounds

300km away to find food for their chicks.

Their only problem is getting airborne.

Along the edge of the colony, there is an open strip of land

facing into the prevailing wind that the birds use as a runway.

They need a long takeoff run, but once they're airborne

they're amazingly graceful.

The capital of the Falklands lies on East Falkland - Stanley.

After albatrosses and penguins,

I feel like I've just stepped back into mainland Britain.

Yet there have been eight generations of Falkland Islanders

originating from many different nations.

It's a multicultural society with a long and varied history

but with a distinctly British flavour.

The ancestors of many of the modern Falkland Islanders

came in pursuit of whales, a legacy marked by this archway

outside the cathedral made from the jawbones of two enormous whales.

I can't help wondering what life was like

chasing down these ocean giants.

Well, this is the place to find out.

Some of the last people to hunt whales commercially still

live here in Stanley and Jimmy Smith was more than happy to reminisce.

Whale oil at that time was the main commodity for everybody.

For the ladies' make-up, lipsticks and stuff,

your margarines and your butters.

Everything that you could think of came from the whale.

-These are the harpoons?

-Yeah.

When I was on the Harvester,

-at the back of the ship I've seen 30 whales.

-30?

Yeah, and I was only allowed to shoot 60 whales a day.

But now I've seen them out here so much I thought,

"No, you carry on living. We'll leave you alone."

Although native Falkland Islanders have a long

and multicultural history, they've elected to remain

part of the UK, which I could hardly miss when I was in Stanley.

I was in town for voting day on a new referendum asking the question,

do you still want to remain a UK Overseas Territory?

I think I can guess what the answer will be!

There was a 92% turnout and when the votes were counted,

99.8% voted in favour of remaining a British Overseas Territory

with just three votes against.

Maybe the only three people not at the party.

THEY SING

This party looks like it is going to go on for a while,

but it's my last night in the Falklands

and I need to get some sleep.

My journey will be much tougher from here on in.

The Falklands is the gateway to South Georgia

and the British Antarctic Territory

and where most journeys to these distant lands begin.

South Georgia is 1,500km over there

and the British Antarctic Territory is 1,300km in that direction.

There's absolutely no landing strips at all on South Georgia

and none that we could use on Antarctica,

so the only way to get to these distant territories is by ship.

This is Jerome Poncet, captain of the Golden fleece,

and this was a reindeer, part of our supplies he is preparing

for our journey into the Southern Ocean.

There are no shops where we're going.

As soon as we get our kit onboard we'll be off

on the next stage of our adventure to South Georgia.

It's 1,500km due east from the Falklands to South Georgia.

Almost as soon as we get under way,

we're joined by a school of Commerson's dolphins

showing off their swimming skills as they play

in the bow wave of the Golden Fleece.

As I travel the Southern Ocean

to visit the remaining Overseas Territories,

I'm retracing another journey that took place a century ago.

I'm following the footsteps of one of the greatest of all

British explorers, Sir Ernest Shackleton.

Exactly 100 years ago, he undertook essentially the same journey

as what we're doing now,

going to South Georgia and then down to Antarctica.

But whereas his journey took four years,

mine is going to take only four weeks.

Shackleton's plan, The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition,

was to make the first land crossing of the entire Antarctic continent.

But first, the expedition ship, The Endurance, went to South Georgia

across the violent seas that are so typical of this part of the world.

I only hope Shackleton was a better sailor than me.

With great relief, we finally arrive off South Georgia,

with its dramatic mountains and wave-lashed shores.

It's quite simply breathtaking.

Glaciers sweep down to the ocean

and Antarctic terns gather to feed in the rich seas.

But the most precious resource in this vast, remote ocean

is land itself.

South Georgia is a magnet for seals and sea birds,

all of which come here to breed.

Gentoo penguins live right around the globe at this latitude

and South Georgia is one of their most important colonies.

They have to share the island with giant petrels, the vultures

of South Georgia, feasting on any carrion they can find.

They can also kill any penguins that are weak or injured.

But the most spectacular colonies here belong to king penguins.

This king penguin colony is home to over half a million birds.

It's one of the greatest concentrations of animals

found anywhere on Earth.

The deep waters of the Southern Ocean that well-up nutrients,

create some of the richest feeding grounds on the planet.

And it's that that supports this huge and incredible

wealth of animals.

The chicks remind me of animated hot water bottles.

And all penguins look very sorry for themselves when they moult.

There are 34 king penguin colonies on South Georgia,

which have more than doubled in numbers in the last three decades.

Marine mammals also come to this speck of land to breed.

Elephant seals.

I can't believe how big these animals are.

The males are huge!

Up to six metres long.

These elephant seals weigh up to four tonnes.

That's over 40 times my weight.

These big males are moulting and their itchy skin

seems to make them irritable.

But these fights also sort out who's boss.

It's only the dominant males, the beach masters that will mate.

There are also huge numbers of Antarctic fur seals here.

But that wasn't always the case.

You can see how tame and unaccustomed these young fur seals

are to man. Of course, it was exactly this way

when the first people reached South Georgia.

It was all too easy just to walk up to them and club them

and kill them and, of course, that's exactly what happened.

These seals were killed for their valuable pelts.

Originally, there were millions of fur seals here

but by the early 1900s they had all but vanished from South Georgia.

Thankfully, those days have gone

and now the fur seals use the old sealing stations for shelter.

Their numbers have risen and, from virtual extinction,

there are now around three million Antarctic fur seals on the island.

Our perception of these animals today is

so completely different from the sealers that came here to hunt them.

Today, most people would view these beautiful fur seals

as important parts of the ecosystem here, or for their beauty.

But 100 years ago, they were viewed entirely as an economic resource.

Oh!

HE CHUCKLES

But there was an even more valuable economic resource here.

As the first seals were approaching extinction,

Carl Larsen, the Norwegian whaler, arrived in South Georgia.

He discovered astounding numbers of great whales close to the island.

And set up the first whaling station here in 1904.

It was so successful that by 1912

there were seven whaling stations on South Georgia.

It's impossible to imagine the sites

that must have greeted those early whalers.

But, I'm reminded of Jimmy Smith's comments

that they could kill up to 60 whales a day.

The first whales they targeted were humpbacks,

which were so curious and friendly they just swam up to the ships.

And these are the harpoons that Jimmy had pictures of.

So many of them.

It's a vivid illustration of how many whales there must've been

here just a century ago.

As Jimmy told me, the whales were mostly killed for oil,

made from their blubber, the layer of fat that insulated them

from the cold, Antarctic waters.

The catcher ships would drag the whale carcasses into this bay

and a steam-powered winch would pull them up through this slip gate,

up onto this even platform.

Then men called flenses,

that are armed with long knives on poles such as this one,

they would then stab at the carcass as it was dragged up.

By inserting their knives,

they could cut away long strips of blubber.

A different winch would then pull those layers off,

just like the skin off a banana, into long strips.

The flenses would then chop up those strips of blubber

into smaller chunks

and those chunks of rubber would then be fed into this hole.

And rotary knives down there would chop it up into small pieces.

The blubber was cooked up in huge vats to extract the oil,

which was then stored in these enormous tanks.

Once the humpbacks had gone, the whalers turned to other species.

Until the slaughter stopped in the mid-1960s,

more than 175,000 whales were processed here.

When the slaughter did stop, it wasn't because of international

legislation, it was simply because the whalers ran out of great whales.

Whaling just wasn't profitable any more.

The echoes of that great slaughter are still here.

This is the sludge from inside these great tanks.

Can you see how it's come out of this outlet

and into these old buckets?

It's actually still liquid.

It's got the consistency of an old cake.

And this tank over here...

This pipe is actually still leaking whale oil,

40-year-old remnants of the oil inside here.

The fur seals of South Georgia have returned to something like

their former numbers but there's less good news for the whales.

Unfortunately, for the great whales,

the future is uncertain in Antarctic waters.

Recent efforts to make the Southern Ocean a whale reserve

were unfortunately blocked

and several of the whaling nations are seriously discussing

the resumption of commercial whaling,

including even endangered species, such as humpbacks.

It really makes you wonder

whether we have learnt nothing at all from our past mistakes.

Ernest Shackleton came here on his way to Antarctica in 1914,

when the whaling industry was at its peak.

He and his men stayed with the local whalers in the whaling

station of Stromness, enjoying their hospitality in relative luxury.

The whalers knew this territory and all its moods

and warned Shackleton that it was an unusually bad year for the ice.

The pack around the Antarctic continent was slow in breaking up.

But Shackleton knew he couldn't delay for ever.

Eventually, he gave the order for the Endurance to head south

and I'm following in his wake.

I thought the journey to South Georgia was rough

but the further south I go, the worse it gets.

And, the worse I feel.

I can honestly say that I understand why the Southern Ocean is

called the roughest waters in the world.

It's day in, day out continuous. We go up and down.

Up to six, seven or even eight metres. It's just nonstop.

I've been at sea for about six days

and we should hopefully see land tomorrow,

or maybe the day after.

Shackleton took a photographer and film-maker with him,

Australian Frank Hurley.

I've watched every second of that film and it seems to me

that Shackleton had an easier journey south than I was having.

At least, at first...

But, as he got closer to Antarctica,

he ran into the ice that the whalers had warned him about.

We have also made it to the edge of Antarctica.

And, unlike the journey down here,

I'm greeted with a scene of tranquillity and unearthly beauty.

We're soon joined by humpbacks, as curious as ever.

I can see why THEY were the first whales to be hunted and,

after such slaughter, possibly within the lifetimes of some

of these whales, I'm touched that they still greet us like this.

It's a poignant welcome to the Antarctic.

Now I'm going to part company with Shackleton but just for a while.

Shackleton sailed directly across the Weddell Sea towards

the main bulk of the continent.

But I'm heading along the Antarctic Peninsula,

a tongue of the great continent that runs northwards.

I'll be able to make landfall here at some of the research bases

scattered along the peninsula.

This territory is different from all the others I've visited.

Britain claims a great wedge of Antarctica,

including the peninsula, all the way down to the South Pole.

But all national territorial claims have been suspended

under the Treaty of Antarctica.

And the first base I land at is Argentine.

The research base of Primavera.

Finally, I take my first footsteps on the great southern continent.

More than 99% of Antarctica is covered with ice

and the tiny 1% that is free of ice is mostly here on the peninsula.

Antarctica only has two species of flowering plants.

The rest of its sparse flora is of mosses and lichens.

The mosses form spectacular clumps but they are very delicate.

It's said that a footprint here can last for decades.

Though this, I must say, is not one of mine.

Heading south again, we have to pick our way through floating ice.

Shackleton had the same problem as he crossed the Weddell Sea.

So progress was slow and the year was already turning.

Eventually, just a few tens of kilometres short of his

intended landfall, the temperatures plummeted from 20 above

to 20 below and the Endurance stuck fast in the ice.

The crew desperately tried to open up leads and free the ship

but they couldn't do it and spring, and the ice break-up

was at least seven months away.

No-one in the outside world had any idea where they were.

They were utterly alone.

Thankfully we didn't have that problem.

And, anyway, with better communications,

and many more bases and ships,

we wouldn't have been stuck for so long.

We've made it to Port Lockroy, a British base established

by the military during World War II and now an historic site.

Surrounded by gentoo penguins, there's even a post office here.

Shackleton had no communication at all with the rest of the world.

All through the winter the pack ice carried them slowly north

back towards the whaling stations of the Southern Antarctic islands.

They drifted for ten months but, even as spring finally came,

there were ominous signs.

The ice was starting to crush the Endurance

and the stout ship's timbers began to creak and groan.

On November 21st, the Endurance finally gave up her resistance

and surrendered to the ice.

Then, as summer came, the pack began to break up around them.

They took to the water in three small boats but,

in the dangerous southern ocean, they weren't that much safer.

Shackleton decided to aim for Deception Island,

not the nearest land but somewhere he knew had a whaling station,

with all the comforts that offered.

It's a fairly straightforward journey for us,

with our powerful engine and plenty of supplies.

Shackleton's journey was much harder.

He had to fight the strong currents and floating ice and,

after a few days, he changed direction

and headed for a landfall that was nearer.

This is where Shackleton wanted to reach, Deception Island.

It might not look like paradise

but if Shackleton's three boats had made it, his starving

and exhausted men would have found luxury at the whaling station.

And there would have been another bonus for the men who had

spent ten months and an Antarctic winter on the pack ice.

Thermal pools.

Deception is an active volcano and, even between eruptions,

the heat below the surface melts the snow and warms the water,

Creating a bubbling, natural Jacuzzi.

The warmth of the island meets the cold Antarctic wind,

mist swirls along the coast.

Add in the deserted whaling station,

and I found Deception to be a strangely eerie place.

Yet this would have been such a welcome sight

for Shackleton's men if they had made it.

But rather than plenty of food and a natural spa,

Shackleton's men were faced with a desperate and almost impossible task

of reaching the tiny speck of land closest to them, Elephant Island.

This is the site that would have greeted them

and this is where I rejoin Shackleton's journey.

I can't begin to imagine how he and his exhausted men must have felt.

Shackleton had guided his men through terrible conditions

and this bleak lump of land must have offered them some hope.

But their ordeal was far from over.

Elephant Island had no whaling stations and no thermal pools.

And, it was a very long way from civilisation.

As they beached their three boats among the colonies of watching

chinstrap penguins, the men had almost lost the will to survive.

This was the very spot where the three boats made landfall.

They called this place Point Wild.

Even though it's an exposed, open, barren, little slip of land,

for the 28 men who had not put foot on land for months and months,

this place must have been absolute paradise.

They might have been better off here than in tiny boats on the dangerous

southern ocean but Shackleton knew they couldn't stay here forever.

They cannibalised the three boats to make one,

the James Caird, seaworthy.

More or less.

Then Shackleton and four of his men set out to find help,

leaving the rest to make a home by upending the two remaining boats.

It was apparently this open area here where the remaining men

overturned their boats and made a rudimentary camp.

It certainly is hard to imagine how 22 men, who remained here

for four-and-a-half months,

eking out a miserable living, hoping to be rescued.

Shackleton hoped to get back to South Georgia but this time

he had only basic navigation aids and he faced utterly foul weather.

On our return trip to South Georgia, we also ran into bad weather

and it really brought home Shackleton's heroism

in the most immediate way I can imagine.

How on earth Shackleton made it in his small, open launch with

five men is completely beyond me.

We're in this luxury steel hulled yacht, that is

heated and warm inside and we are still suffering at these huge

waves, trying to get to South Georgia.

It's an absolute miracle that Shackleton made it alive.

But, yet again, Shackleton overcame what seemed like impossible

odds and landed the James Caird on South Georgia's southern coast.

But, there was another ordeal ahead.

The whaling stations lay on the north side of South Georgia.

To reach safety,

Shackleton would have to cross to the other side of the islands.

The island is only just over 30 kilometres wide, so after what

he'd been through, that might seem like a Sunday afternoon stroll.

But, far from it.

It was a desperate gamble.

The interior of South Georgia was completely unknown.

There were no maps, no-one had ever charted it.

Shackleton didn't even know how long it would take to cross the island.

Great glaciers and snowfields stood in his way.

Exhausting to cross but again Shackleton used his ingenuity.

Shackleton used nails from the James Caird and drove them

through his boots to give him grip on the ice

and slowly he made his way across this range.

This is the Shackleton Pass.

He went across here and got to the other side of the island.

But the long journey was wearing him down.

Shackleton was exhausted

and didn't know how much longer he could keep going.

Shackleton decided to take a desperate gamble

and slide down the mountain slopes.

He had no idea what lay before him but he gave it a shot anyway.

And it works!

Of course, Shackleton came a lot further than that

but he got down the mountain in seconds.

Ernest Shackleton crossed this ridge side

and finally his ordeal was over.

Down there in the valley below he could see the whaling

station of Stromness.

They had last seen this station a year and a half ago

and for most of that time they had been alone in a frozen wilderness.

When last here, Shackleton had stayed in this house

but when he banged on the door

his host didn't even recognise him.

He was so emaciated.

As ever, Shackleton's first thought was for his men,

trying to survive on Elephant Island.

He set out to rescue them

but was turned back three times by his old enemy...

Ice.

Finally, on board a Chilean ship, Yelcho, he made it.

His men emerged from their makeshift shelters to greet him.

They had been stranded here for four-and-a-half months,

yet they were all alive.

Today, a monument stands on this remote spot

to captain of the Yelcho who overcame the pack ice

and carried Shackleton's men to safety.

Shackleton returned to South Georgia a few years later,

drawn by the sense of awe he felt in these dramatic landscapes.

He died here and is buried in this lonely spot.

It's a tradition that if you visit his grave,

you must bring a drink to quench the great man's thirst.

So much has changed in the 100 years since Ernest Shackleton came here.

In his day, this was one of the most remote places on the planet.

But today these wildlife spectacles attract thousands of people,

drawn by that same sense of awe that lured Shackleton.

But, in a land where a single footprint could last for decades,

increasing numbers of people could be disastrous.

Yet Antarctica faces a longer-lasting problem.

Climate change.

This remote part of the planet is warming faster than anywhere else.

The ice is melting and changing patterns of ocean circulation

are disrupting the distribution of nutrients in these waters.

That will affect every creature here

from marine plankton right up to the great whales.

The future of this spectacular continent hangs in the balance.

I wonder what Ernest Shackleton would have thought?