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Wordie House

A vir­tu­al tour through Wordie House on Argen­ti­ne Islands in the Ant­ar­c­tic Pen­in­su­la. The who­le tour con­sists of 9 pan­ora­mas, one from (almost) any room of the Wordie House. 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.

Pan­ora­mas Wordie House as a vir­tu­al tour / pan­o­r­amic tour

Hin­weis

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/WebGL or Flash.

And if you like, you can share the Pano-Link or link it yours­elf.

Pan­ora­mas

  1. Win­ter Island: Wordie House
  2. Ent­rance hall
  3. Sur­vey Room
  4. Met Room
  5. Kit­chen
  6. Living Room
  7. Dog Room, Link­way
  8. Gene­ra­tor room
  9. Wordie House

Some addi­tio­nal infor­ma­ti­on about the indi­vi­du­al places:

Win­ter Island: Wordie House

Win­ter Island is a small island in the midd­le of the Argen­ti­ne Islands, a small group of small islands (lots of „smalls“ in here). It is clo­se to the Ukra­ni­an rese­arch sta­ti­on Ver­nad­sky Base (Bri­tish Fara­day Sta­ti­on until 1996).

This place on Win­ter Island was alre­a­dy used in 1935 by the Bri­tish Gra­ham Land Expe­di­ti­on led by John Rymill for their first win­tering. Not­hing is left of their base. It is said to have been des­troy­ed by a tsu­na­mi in 1946.

Wordie House was built in ear­ly 1947 by the Falk­land Islands Depen­den­ci­es Sur­vey as the main buil­ding of their Base F. It was used until 1954, when it was repla­ced by a lar­ger base on neigh­bou­ring Galin­dez Island. This new base was ori­gi­nal­ly cal­led Argen­ti­ne Islands and later ren­a­med Fara­day Sta­ti­on. It was sold to the Ukrai­ne in 1996 for one pound. Wordie House was kept as a his­to­ri­cal monu­ment, for free­time use and as an emer­gen­cy refu­ge in case some­thing would hap­pen to the main base.

Ent­rance hall

The ent­rance hall is long and nar­row. All rooms are acces­si­ble direct­ly from the ent­rance hall.

As space is limi­t­ed, the num­ber of per­sons insi­de the hut must be regu­la­ted and it shall not be more than 12 at any time. Boots need to be clea­ned and no back­packs or lar­ge came­ra bags are allo­wed to pre­vent arte­facts from being swept from tables or cup­boards.

Sur­vey Room

The Sur­vey Room has a old-style type­wri­ter and various sci­en­ti­fic instru­ments. It is not as com­ple­te as it would have been when Base F was still acti­ve, many instru­ments will have been moved to the new sta­ti­on in 1954. The­re used to be a beau­tiful instru­ment to record suns­hi­ne hours made of a glass ball ser­ving as a bur­ning glass and a stri­pe of paper with it, I think this is cal­led a helio­graph and it was on the box (which is now open) next to the type­wri­ter.

Met Room

The Met Room was, as the name says, the place whe­re part of the meteo­ro­lo­gi­cal work was done and instru­ments were kept. Most of them were remo­ved later and the­re is not too much left now in the Met Room.

Kit­chen

The kit­chen is in the same room as the living room, but the chim­ney kind of sepa­ra­tes the room into two halfs. That was both prac­ti­cal and cosy. The kit­chen seems rela­tively modern and the­re is still quite a bit of tin­ned food in the cup­boards, all in a very char­ming and equal­ly Eng­lish mid 20th cen­tu­ry style. Of cour­se you should not for­get here that Wordie House was still occa­sio­nal­ly used by mem­bers of the Fara­day Sta­ti­on (today Ver­nad­sky) until at least 1996.

Living Room

Situa­ted in the same room as the kit­chen, the living room was the cent­re of ever­y­day life in Base F/Wordie House. This is were the men (no women back then) were sha­ring their time, meals, and some of them also slept here. The­re were usual­ly four or five men sta­tio­ned on Base F during its acti­ve years, from 1947 to 1954.

Dog Room, Link­way

To be honest, I am not quite sure about the descrip­ti­on „Dog Room, Link­way“. The­re were cer­tain­ly no dogs in this far, which would be far too small for this pur­po­se and it would have been quite unu­su­al. It is more likely that dog food and asso­cia­ted equip­ment such as harnes­ses were stored here, next to gene­ral sto­rage.

Even nati­ve Eng­lish spea­k­ers fami­li­ar with the place were not able to explain the mea­ning of the word „link­way“ to me, and neither was my dic­tion­a­ry. I guess it just indi­ca­tes that this room is a con­nec­tion, in this case from the rest of the house to the toi­let. Cer­tain­ly a very important func­tion.

Gene­ra­tor room

Base F was a sta­ti­on of the ear­ly days of modern times in the Ant­ar­c­tic, and as such, it had elec­tri­ci­ty for light, radio etc. The gene­ra­tor was very important. And it was equal­ly important that the crew was able to do all neces­sa­ry repairs, so they had a ful­ly equip­ped work­shop which was also in this room.

Wordie House

The sur­roun­dings of Wordie House are typi­cal for the count­less small islets and islands that you will find off the coast of the Ant­ar­c­tic Pen­in­su­la in this lar­ger area. Many of the Argen­ti­ne Islands and other, simi­lar ones are cover­ed by small ice caps, whe­re­as some are just bar­ren rocks. In the Arc­tic, small islands wit­hout hig­her ele­va­tions would just be ice-free in sum­mer. This shows that the Ant­ar­c­tic is col­der and hars­her than the Arc­tic.

A zodiac crui­se through the chan­nels with their part­ly icy and part­ly rocky coasts is always wort­hwhile. The­re are often many ice­bergs drif­ting in the more open waters sur­roun­ding the­se islands.

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last modification: 2019-02-05 · copyright: Rolf Stange
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