Deception Island

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

The first authenticated sighting of Deception Island was by the British sealers William Smith and Edward Bransfield from the brig Williams in January 1820. It was first visited and explored by the American sealer Nathaniel Palmer on the sloop Hero the following summer, on 15 November 1820. He remained for two days, exploring the central bay. Palmer named it "Deception Island" on account of its outward deceptive appearance as a normal island, when the narrow entrance of Neptune's Bellows revealed it rather to be a ring around a flooded caldera. Palmer was part of an American sealing fleet from Stonington, Connecticut, under the command of Benjamin Pendleton, consisting of 6 ships. Port Fisher was used as their operational base from 1820 to 1821. Palmer met Bellingshausen close to the island in Jan. 1821, during the First Russian Antarctic Expedition. Over the next few years, Deception became a focal point of the short-lived fur-sealing industry in the South Shetlands. The industry began with a handful of ships in the 1819–1820 summer season, rising to nearly a hundred in 1821–1822. Massive overhunting meant that the fur seals neared extinction in the South Shetlands within a few years, and the sealing industry collapsed as quickly as it had begun. Deception was abandoned again in approximately 1825. In 1829, the British Naval Expedition to the South Atlantic under the command of Captain Henry Foster in HMS Chanticleer stopped at Deception. The expedition conducted a topographic survey and scientific experiments, particularly pendulum and magnetic observations. A watercolour made by Lieutenant Kendall of the Chanticleer during the visit may be the first image made of the island. A subsequent visit by the American elephant-sealer Ohio in 1842 reported the first recorded volcanic activity, with the southern shore "in flames".

Reader's Guide

The second phase of human activity at Deception began in the early 20th century. In 1904, an active whaling industry was established at South Georgia, taking advantage of new technology and an almost untouched population of whales to make rapid profits. It spread south into the South Shetland Islands, where the lack of shore-based infrastructure meant that the whales had to be towed to moored factory ships for processing; these needed a sheltered anchorage and a plentiful supply of fresh water, both of which could be found at Deception. In 1906, the Norwegian-Chile whaling company Sociedad Ballenera de Magallanes started using Whalers Bay as a base for a single ship, the Gobernador Bories. Other whalers followed, with several hundred men resident at Deception during the Antarctic summers and as many as 13 ships operating in peak years. In 1908, the British government formally declared the island to be part of the Falkland Islands Dependencies, thus under British control, establishing postal services and appointing a magistrate and customs officer for the island. A permanent on-shore station was established by the Norwegian company Hvalfangerselskabet Hektor A/S in 1912 – to an estimated 40% of the available oil was being wasted by the ship-based system. This was the only successful shore-based industry ever to operate in Antarctica, reaping high profits in its first years. The development of pelagic whaling in the 1920s meant that whaling companies were no longer tied to sheltered anchorages. In early 1931, the Hektor factory finally ceased operation, ending commercial whaling at the island entirely. Deception remained uninhabited for a decade, but was revisited in 1941 by the British auxiliary warship HMS Queen of Bermuda, which destroyed the oil tanks and some remaining supplies to ensure it could not be used as a German supply base. In 1942, an Argentine party aboard the Pri...

Did You Know?

• The island's name comes from its deceptive appearance: it looks like a normal island, but the narrow entrance of Neptune's Bellows reveals it is actually a ring around a flooded caldera.
• A watercolour made by Lieutenant Kendall of HMS Chanticleer in 1829 may be the first image ever made of the island.
• The shore-based whaling station established by Hvalfangerselskabet Hektor A/S in 1912 was the only successful shore-based whaling industry ever to operate in Antarctica.
• Volcanic eruptions in 1967 and 1969 seriously damaged local scientific stations on the island.
• Deception Island volcanic ash layers have been found in South Pole ice cores.