Accepting a science-based charter to the South Sandwich Islands was always a huge gamble. It’s doesn’t happen that often, but sometimes when sticking your neck out in the Southern Ocean, you just get plain lucky.

The semi-active volcanic arc of the South Sandwich Islands consists of seven main islands and their outliers. It begins in the north with the impressive volcanic cone of Zavodovski, 300 miles southeast from the southern tip of South Georgia. The chain lies right in the teeth of depressions that form in the Drake Passage below the toe of South America and is notorious for gale-force winds, ice risk and generally miserable conditions. It is no tourist destination for sure.

Sailing to the South Sandwich Islands

The southernmost island, aptly named South Thule, is 200 miles south of Zavodovski and sits just above 60 degrees south, on the edge of the winter sea ice band around the Antarctic continent. It is not quite in the Antarctic Treaty territory, so the UK officially owns this stretch of hostile real estate. Together with South Georgia, it is officially called the UK Overseas Territory of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.

Partly discovered and charted by Captain James Cook in 1775 and partly by the Russian explorer Captain Thaddeus von Bellingshausen in 1819, the islands have hosted only a handful of visitors since. Attempts at sealing and shore-based whaling in the 19th and into the 20th century were unsuccessful. This because of a lack of natural harbours and the ferocious weather conditions.