antarktis-3
fb  360-Grad-Panoramen of Spitsbergen  de  en  Spitsbergen Shop  
pfeil Grytviken pfeil

Panoramas Port Lockroy

360º-Panoramas

A vir­tu­al tour through Port Lock­roy, the muse­um (for­mer Bri­tish sta­ti­on “Base A”) on Gou­dier Island in the Ant­ar­c­tic Pen­in­su­la. The who­le tour con­sists of 12 pan­ora­mas, one from any exhi­bi­ti­on space of the muse­um. You can eit­her let it play auto­ma­ti­cal­ly or you can take a vir­tu­al tour from room to room by cli­cking on the mar­kers in the doors.

Enjoy the vir­tu­al tour, we app­re­cia­te your feed­back – if you like the tour, plea­se for­ward the link to this page to others who might be inte­res­ted.

Port Lock­roy: vir­tu­al tour / pan­o­r­amic tour

Hint

Once you have ente­red the vir­tu­al tour, you can eit­her use the map in the lower left cor­ner to navi­ga­te, or the bar at the bot­tom, or click on sym­bols within the panos to enter the next one (only if the next loca­ti­on is visi­ble, not always available). Or you can just let it run and it will auto­ma­ti­cal­ly switch to the next pano after one tur­n­around. You can switch the sound off (upper right cor­ner) if you wish.
You can also view this vir­tu­al tour on iPads and other tablets if they are powerful enough and have an up-to-date sys­tems soft­ware. On desk­top sys­tems, you can use both HTML5 or Flash.

Sta­ti­ons

  1. Port Lock­roy, Gou­dier Island
  2. Muse­um: Ent­rance
  3. Muse­um: Muse­um Shop
  4. Muse­um: Cor­ri­dor (1)
  5. Muse­um: Work­shop
  6. Muse­um: Cor­ri­dor (2)
  7. Muse­um: Kit­chen
  8. Muse­um: Radio Room
  9. Muse­um: Bunk Room
  10. Muse­um: Lounge
  11. Muse­um: Sci­ence Room

Some addi­tio­nal infor­ma­ti­on about the indi­vi­du­al places:

Port Lock­roy, Gou­dier Island

Port Lock­roy (64°49,5’S/63°29,6’W) is on Gou­dier Island, a very small island in a well shel­te­red natu­ral har­bour, sur­roun­ded by the gla­ciers and steep moun­ta­ins of Wien­cke Island. Port Lock­roy is actual­ly the name of the bay, but the name is often used refer­ring to the for­mer base, now a well-known, very inte­res­t­ing and char­ming litt­le muse­um and a very popu­lar site for visi­tors.

The sta­ti­on was built as „Base A“ in 1944 as part of the slight­ly mys­te­rious Bri­tish „Ope­ra­ti­on Taba­rin“, which was meant to estab­lish a Bri­tish pre­sence in an area so far unoc­cu­p­ied at a time when Ger­man mili­ta­ry acti­vi­ties had to be feared. After the war, the bases of Ope­ra­ti­on Taba­rin were tur­ned into rese­arch sta­ti­ons, most of which were aban­do­ned during the years to come. Base A was in use until 1962 and star­ted to decay after that.

In 1996, the Bri­tish Ant­ar­c­tic Heri­ta­ge Trust (BAHT) took the place into use again by start­ing a com­pre­hen­si­ve reno­va­ti­on and restau­ra­ti­on pro­cess. The BAHT is now run­ning „Port Lock­roy“ very suc­cessful­ly as a muse­um and post office. Visi­ting the muse­um gives tou­rists a very inte­res­t­ing impres­si­on of a sta­ti­on in the 1950s, a time after the „heroic epoch“ but befo­re modern times real­ly came to Ant­ar­c­ti­ca. Sledge dogs were part of every day life during a ser­vice peri­od that would often last three years, but satel­li­te-based com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on and navi­ga­ti­on and other modern tech­ni­cal achie­ve­ments were unhe­ard of in tho­se days.

Addi­tio­nal­ly, Gou­dier Island is home to a colo­ny of very fri­end­ly Gen­too pen­gu­ins, who do appear­ent­ly not mind the pre­sence of tou­rists too much as long as they (the tou­rists) are well beha­ved. This is con­firm­ed by annu­al stu­dies car­ri­ed out by the muse­um staff: Com­pa­ri­sons of bree­ding suc­cess in the visi­tor are­as near the muse­um and tho­se fur­ther parts of the island that are off limits for tou­rists do not show a dif­fe­rence. It may even seem the Gen­too pen­gu­ins are doing bet­ter in the visi­tor area. It has been sug­gested that the regu­lar pre­sence of humans keeps Sku­as away (pre­da­to­ry birds).

No rese­arch is done the­se days on Gou­dier Island bey­ond the­se stu­dies, and the place has lost its sta­tus as a sta­ti­on in 1962. It is now a muse­um and post office and cer­tain­ly a more inte­res­t­ing, more beau­tiful and more wild­life-fri­end­ly place than any Ant­ar­c­tic sta­ti­on I have seen.

Muse­um: Ent­rance

This is whe­re you find the post­box, an item of high importance for most visi­tors. Emp­tied every day during the sea­son, but it may take some time befo­re your post­cards find their way through Stan­ley (Falk­land Islands) to their desti­na­ti­on. Espe­ci­al­ly if thrown in after the end of sea­son of the muse­um …

Important: clo­se the door behind you! Once you have got pen­gu­ins insi­de, it is dif­fi­cult to get rid of them again 😉

Muse­um: Muse­um Shop

New in 2018: Now we final­ly have two pan­ora­mas to the muse­um shop. The sou­ve­nir shop is high­ly popu­lar, they have got a lot of nice stuff, and sales sup­port the muse­um. The „Mon­roe“ on the door has beco­me quite famous, make sure you don’t miss it.

Muse­um: Cor­ri­dor (1)

We con­ti­nue through the cor­ri­dor into the muse­um, pas­sing the work­shop.

Muse­um: Work­shop

The work­shop is actual­ly not part of the exhi­bi­ti­on, as it is still being used. But let’s have a curious look … it is still not too dif­fe­rent from what it would have been like in the years fol­lo­wing 1944.

Muse­um: Cor­ri­dor (2)

Seve­ral doors are lea­ding into the various rooms of the for­mer sta­ti­on.

Muse­um: Kit­chen

The old kit­chen is defi­ni­te­ly among­st the high­lights of the muse­um which you shouldn’t miss, with old tins on the shel­ves which have been the­re for deca­des, pre­sen­ting the con­cen­tra­ted culina­ry charme of mid-20th cen­tu­ry Eng­land. 🙂

Muse­um: Radio Room

The old radio room. Today, a lap­top con­nec­ted to a satel­li­te pho­ne can do more than all this stuff tog­e­ther. The­re are wild sto­ries about the use of the­se his­to­ric sta­ti­ons, which were not exact­ly user-fri­end­ly. Often, a pedal-dri­ven gene­ra­tor had to be work­ed for hours befo­re a short mes­sa­ge could be sent or recei­ved. Dis­ap­point­ment was then gre­at it it tur­ned out to be a mes­sa­ge alre­a­dy recei­ved the day befo­re, erro­n­o­us­ly sent twice …

Muse­um: Bunk Room

Make sure you don’t miss the bunk room. Sin­gle rooms were obvious­ly not­hing one would have bothe­red with in tho­se days – remem­ber, Base A was built as part of a mili­ta­ry ope­ra­ti­on. The muse­um staff had their accom­mo­da­ti­on here until quite recent­ly (2011), but due to the room cli­ma­te, this was neither good for the peo­p­le nor for the con­ser­va­ti­on of the his­to­ric room. When the bunk­room was restau­ra­ted and tur­ned back into its ori­gi­nal sta­te, seve­ral pain­tings of fema­le stars of tho­se years came out on the walls, simi­lar to the Mon­roe in the shop.

Muse­um: Lounge

The lounge has a very Eng­lish atmo­sphe­re, sto­cked with a small libra­ry, bar and gra­mo­pho­ne. If you are lucky and the­re are not too many peo­p­le around, then you might even hear some 1950’s music with a very ori­gi­nal sound, while a young Queen Eliza­beth II. and her equal­ly young prin­ce cons­ort are wat­ching you from the wall. Sin­ce then, they have chan­ged more than this once quite lively and still very love­ly place.

Muse­um: Sci­ence Room

The sci­ence room is the fur­thest and the last one of our litt­le vir­tu­al tour. Here, you can see all kinds of rese­arch equip­ment, the latest of its kind in the 1950s. Abso­lut­e­ly modern in tho­se years, but of cour­se only of his­to­ri­cal value today. Next to meteo­ro­lo­gy and sur­vey­ing, iono­sphe­ric stu­dies con­nec­ted to the trans­mis­si­on of radio waves, from which use could be drawn both for mili­ta­ry and civi­li­an pur­po­ses, was an important field of work for the sci­en­tists.

Back

4 Comments to Port Lock­roy

  1. Patricia Kisman says:

    I was the­re in Janu­ary 2007 with a GAP group from the Explo­rer, which sunk later that year after retur­ning to the Ant­ar­c­tic in late Fall 2007. I remem­ber most of this, but the­re was less snow and I do not remem­ber the lounge. Thank you for the gre­at pho­to­gra­phy.

  2. Joan says:

    Thank you soooo much for this tour. I’ve been working on Pen­gu­in­Watch and the Post Office at Port Lock­roy is my favou­ri­te site for pen­gu­in coun­ting. They some­ti­mes appear to queue at the win­dows for ser­vice and this is often humo­rous­ly com­men­ted on by us citi­zen sci­en­tists. Best wis­hes.

  3. bob whittock says:

    The old place is not how i remem­ber it in ’55 and is much lar­ger
    Howe­ver the atmos­he­re remains brin­ging back many hap­py memo­ries . The­re
    WERE NO NES­T­ING PEN­GU­INS ON THE ISLAND, NO DOGS but
    ONE CAT – TIDD­LES!! Plus…Alan, ber­nard, john and myself….Good days!!!

  4. Emma Jones says:

    I thought the sce­n­ery was beau­tiful, and the buil­ding had an old rustic fee­ling. My favo­ri­te part was the kit­chen. It had an anci­ent fee­ling to it, but also real­ly cool.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

last modification: 2018-06-03 · copyright: Rolf Stange
css.php