Part of The Antarctic & Southern Ocean
- Where
- South Atlantic
British Overseas Territory - Coordinates
- 54.2833° S
36.5000° W - Biome
- Subantarctic tundra & coast
- Access
- By ship only — no airport
- Key sites
- Grytviken, Salisbury Plain,
St Andrews Bay, Fortuna Bay - Best visited
- November–March
A beach so full of penguins that the penguins have suburbs. I bowed a very great number of times and was ignored a very great number of times, which I take as acceptance. At a small white fence, travellers pour a drink onto the grass for someone who walked farther than any list.
The short answer
South Georgia is a mountainous island in the South Atlantic, roughly 1,300 kilometres southeast of the Falklands and administered as a British Overseas Territory. It has no airport and no permanent civilian population, and is reached only by ship. It is best known for two things: king penguin colonies numbering in the hundreds of thousands at Salisbury Plain and St Andrews Bay, and the grave of Sir Ernest Shackleton in the cemetery at Grytviken, an abandoned Norwegian whaling station.
Why it's worth knowing
Antarctica itself is largely white. South Georgia is the opposite — tussock grass, black rock, glaciers, and an almost obscene density of animals. Expedition crews call it the Galápagos of the Poles, and for once the comparison is not marketing.
The scale is the thing that does not survive description. A king penguin colony of several hundred thousand birds is not a large group of penguins; it is a landscape feature, visible as a moving brown-and-white field from a mile offshore, audible before it is visible, and smellable before that. Elephant seals the size of cars lie among them. Fur seals, hunted nearly to extinction here and now recovered in enormous numbers, occupy the beaches with strong opinions about where you walk.
The field notes
Grytviken
Grytviken was a Norwegian whaling station, established in 1904 and worked until the 1960s, and its rusting remains still stand at the head of King Edward Cove — oil tanks, flensing plan, a small white church. A museum and a post office operate in season.
The cemetery holds 64 graves. Most are Norwegian whalers killed in accidents at the station or aboard ship. One is Shackleton's.
Why Shackleton is here
In 1916, after his ship Endurance was crushed by pack ice and his men were stranded on Elephant Island, Shackleton and five others sailed 1,300 kilometres of the Southern Ocean in a 23-foot open lifeboat, the James Caird, and landed at King Haakon Bay on South Georgia's south coast. The whaling stations were on the north coast. So he walked across the island — unmapped, glaciated, with no equipment worth the name — and arrived at Stromness. Every one of his men was eventually brought home alive.
He died of a heart attack aboard ship at Grytviken on 5 January 1922, aged 47, at the start of another expedition. His body was on its way to Britain when his widow was reached by telegram; she asked that he be buried on South Georgia. He was laid to rest on 5 March 1922.
The custom now is to gather at the grave, take a mouthful of whisky, and pour the rest on the ground. Almost every ship does it. A full-size replica of the James Caird stands in a building beside the museum, and the shock of the thing is how small it is.
Biosecurity
Checks here are the strictest most travellers will encounter anywhere. Boots are scrubbed and inspected, velcro is picked clean, bags are vacuumed. At Grytviken visitors are asked not to set bags on the ground at all, and to avoid areas marked with orange posts where invasive plants are being controlled.
The reason is the rodent eradication programme run by the South Georgia Heritage Trust — by most accounts the largest such operation ever attempted on any island, baiting the ice-free ground in phases and declared complete in 2018 after roughly a decade of work. Rats and mice introduced by sealers and whalers had eaten the eggs and chicks of ground-nesting birds for two centuries; with them gone, species including the endemic South Georgia pipit returned. One reintroduction undoes all of it. The fastidiousness is the price of the recovery.
- Bow to a king penguin. Be ignored. Consider it a success.
- Give the fur seals the right of way. All of it.
- Scrub my boots until they are the cleanest boots I own.
- Raise something at the white fence and pour the rest, as is proper.
- Listen to the beach with eyes shut — the loudest quiet place on any list of mine.
A mouthful of whisky, and the rest poured out. At Shackleton's grave the ritual is fixed: drink some, pour the remainder onto the ground, step aside for the next person. Ships carry a bottle for the purpose. It is the only place on any of these itineraries where a hundred passengers queue quietly to do the same small thing.
Tally, in the marginEveryone keeps a little and gives the rest away — the best toast I know, and I did not invent it.
Getting there
There is no airport. South Georgia is reached only by ship, almost always as part of a longer expedition voyage from Ushuaia taking in the Falklands, South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula — typically 18 to 22 days. The crossing from the Falklands takes around two days.
Landings are weather-dependent and can be lost entirely; itineraries here are intentions, not promises. Choose an IAATO-member operator, and expect biosecurity procedures to be enforced strictly. The season runs November to March, with November and December for elephant seal breeding and the peak of the king penguin spectacle later in the season.
Mark this place
Common questions
Where is South Georgia?
South Georgia is a mountainous island in the South Atlantic, roughly 1,300 kilometres southeast of the Falkland Islands, administered as a British Overseas Territory. It has no airport and no permanent civilian population, and is reached only by ship as part of longer Antarctic expedition voyages.
Why is Shackleton buried on South Georgia?
Ernest Shackleton died of a heart attack aboard ship at Grytviken on 5 January 1922, aged 47. His body was being returned to Britain when his widow was contacted, and she asked that he be buried on South Georgia, the island he had crossed on foot in 1916 to save his stranded crew. He was buried at Grytviken on 5 March 1922.
What is the tradition at Shackleton's grave?
Visitors to Shackleton's grave at Grytviken traditionally toast him with whisky, taking a mouthful and pouring the remainder onto the ground. Expedition ships carry a bottle for the purpose, and the ritual is one of the most consistently observed moments on any South Georgia itinerary.
What is Salisbury Plain famous for?
Salisbury Plain on South Georgia holds one of the island's largest king penguin colonies, numbering in the hundreds of thousands of birds. Together with St Andrews Bay it is the reason South Georgia is sometimes called the Galapagos of the Poles.
What was Grytviken?
Grytviken was a Norwegian whaling station on South Georgia, established in 1904 and worked until the 1960s. Its rusting remains still stand at King Edward Cove alongside a museum, a small church and a post office. Its cemetery holds 64 graves, most of them Norwegian whalers, including that of Ernest Shackleton.
Why is biosecurity so strict on South Georgia?
South Georgia enforces strict biosecurity because rodents introduced by sealers and whalers devastated its native ground-nesting birds. The South Georgia Heritage Trust's eradication programme, widely described as the largest ever attempted on any island, was declared complete in 2018 after roughly a decade, and species including the endemic South Georgia pipit have since recovered. Visitors have boots scrubbed and bags vacuumed before landing, and at Grytviken are asked not to place bags on the ground.
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