If you had told me that I would spend Christmas 2023 in the Antarctic, surrounded by penguins and icebergs, on a “tall ship” no less, I might have questioned your sanity. But as fate would have it, I was blessed with the opportunity to spend seven weeks on a Dutch barque (the proper name for her particular sailing rig) cruising through the South Atlantic, the Scotia Sea, and ultimately, the high southern latitudes of the Antarctic. Though I knew I was in for an unforgettable adventure, I could not have been prepared for the stunning natural beauty that I would experience, or the thrills of blue-water sailing, and, perhaps the most unexpected joy, the amazing characters I would meet while sailing on Europa. We were all there for different reasons, but were united by a common delight in the wonders of the natural world, especially as experienced through that most beautiful of mediums—a square-rigged sailing vessel. I think I can speak for myself and all of my companions on Europa that we would have echoed the sentiments of Christopher McCandless (AKA Alexander Supertramp) that, “… there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.”
I am romantic by inclination, and were this a novel, I might tell you that I had been shanghaied in some seedy dockside bar, and whirled away on my adventure by dramatic forces. In all stark reality, I discovered Europa, and her sailing adventures, through a social media advertisement. In addition to the inherent beauty of a square-rigger, I was charmed by Europa’s historical character, having started her life as a light-ship on the Elbe, in 1911. I was hooked! After submitting a brief application for the 2023 Antarctic voyage, I quickly received notification from the Europa team that they already had a full crew, and that there was no more room. Months went by, and the idea of a voyage with Europa was little more than a sticky note in the dusty back office of my mind, when on a misty morning at the end of August, I received an email saying that they had a last minute cancellation and that if I could commit to the voyage within a week, the berth was mine. So it was that I found myself on the Montevideo docks in the middle of November, waiting to embark with my fellow “voyage crew”. By the night of November the 15th, we were bound for the Falklands, with a glorious sunset over the mouth of the River Plate lighting our wake on fire.
My voyage on Europa, after sailing to the Falklands, largely followed the outline of the Scotia Sea, which in turn, is encompassed by the submerged remains of that mountain chain which, once upon a time, ran from the soaring cordillera of the Andes, all the way down to the Antarctic Peninsula, long since shattered by ancient tectonic forces. Our ten day run down to the Falklands was full of memorable vignettes. To my delight, I discovered that several of my shipmates shared my love for sea-shanties. Many was the night that we found ourselves singing about “Valparaiso round’ the Horn” while watching the Southern Cross march from the southern horizon to its resting place above our heads, with a sea flecked by bioluminescent foam mirroring the starry skies above. After making our landfall in the northwestern reaches of the Falklands, we spent another week sailing between the tiny islands that compose the northern edge of the archipelago, ultimately concluding our visit in Port Stanley, the capital (and only) city of the Falklands. For brevity’s sake, I will limit my coverage of Stanley, a charming slice of Britain at the edge of the world, to the observation that it was there that I, for the first time, experienced “land sickness”. We had gone ashore prior, in the Zodiacs, without ill-effects, but all we had seen was natural terrain, largely untouched by man-made structures. However, in Stanley, the sharp angles and shapes of the town’s buildings were so at odds with the constant pitch and roll of Europa on a clear horizon, that we were all mildly unwell for our first few hours in port. Thankfully, we recovered and enjoyed some time ashore before setting sail for South Georgia.
My experience sailing Europa, up this point, had been exciting due to the novelty, but the sailing itself had been fairly tame. The leg of the voyage from the Falklands to South Georgia was a different story. The voyage crew, as opposed to the permanent crew, was divided into three watches: red, white, and blue, for the colors of the Dutch flag. Watches were typically four hours long, except for the two shorter “dog” watches, which allowed the watches to move through the twenty-four hour cycle. To quote Dr. Stephen Maturin, a beloved character from the unequalled maritime novels of Patrick O’Brian, dog watches are so named because they are “cur-tailed”. On the second day out from Stanley, my watch, which was “Blue Watch” came off just before dinner, and it was as we ate our meal, jammed in at odd angles to account for Europa heeling to starboard, by what felt like thirty degrees, we saw our first iceberg. It was a beautiful speck of blue and white on the horizon, illuminated by a spectacular golden hour; everyone talked about it and took all the pictures they could; all was peaceful when I climbed into my bunk that night.
When I awoke, just before my watch came back on duty around midnight, there was a strong sea running and rain was beating down on the decks above. As I was shifting into my heavy weather gear, the preceding watch was coming below-decks and they seemed shaken, not to mention soaking wet. There was ice in the water, and not big, visible bergs, easily spotted and avoided, but rather smaller “bergy bits”, as large as a 15-passenger van, bobbing in the water all around us. Even though we had few sails set and were running at a cautious speed, impact with even these smaller pieces of ice could have smashed right through Europa’s hull. As I went to my station on the bow to relieve the preceding watch, the driving rain and darkness was pierced only by a spotlight out on the bowsprit that danced across the waves before us, providing minimal illumination at best; I will always remember the advice we received then, “If it looks like a wave, but it doesn’t break, it’s not a wave: it’s ice!” As we crossed into the significantly colder waters of the Southern Ocean, we got a taste of real rough-weather sailing: startling at times, but exhilarating throughout!
We arrived in South Georgia, on December the 5th, the same date that Ernest Shackleton, 109 years before, sailed from South Georgia aboard the Endurance, bound for the trials and travails of the Weddell Sea, where eventually the Endurance would sink beneath the ice and Shackleton and his men would join the ranks of legendary polar explorers. South Georgia is formed from the remains of that Andean mountain chain, and in her present form, is not unlike a Switzerland dropped in the middle of the ocean, with soaring snow-covered peaks, and valleys carved by eons of glacial creep. I will never forget the penguin colonies of Fortuna Bay, with thousands of king penguins waddling around in formation, with the air of New Yorkers crossing the street, completely unbothered by the raucous and even violent herds of fur seals. Other unforgettable memories of South Georgia include retracing the last day of Shackleton’s desperate hike to bring help to his men, and seeing the ghostly remains of Stromness, the now long since abandoned whaling station, whose steam whistle spoke salvation to Shackelton’s small party. Our final day on South Georgia was spent at Grytviken, where a portion of the whaling station has been made safe for exploring, along with a research outpost of the British Antarctic Survey: we paid our respects at Shackleton’s grave, in the company of visiting sailors from the other vessel at Grytviken: HMS Forth!
The third leg of our voyage, from South Georgia, into the Weddell Sea, was full of ice, rough weather, plunging temperatures: all ingredients for thrilling sailing. On December the 17th, we entered the Weddell Sea “through the front door”, a door that felt like it was closing behind us as we skirted the almost 40 mile square super-iceberg, formally known as “A23.A”. Though our time in the Weddell Sea was limited by weather conditions, we were able to make it as far south as Seymour Island, which, at 64 degrees, 14 minutes south, was the extent of our approach to the Antarctic circle: our way was blocked beyond that point by what seemed like solid ice. With a lookout high above on the fore-royal yard, we picked our way through fields of floating bergs, with the sun never truly setting, only hovering just below the horizon for hours, only to swing back again. After days of peering over the edge of the frozen continent, we finally set foot on the continent itself, at Brown Bluff, the eroded remains of a volcano that had erupted beneath a glacier, leaving behind weird and wild basalt formations. This was the end of our time in the Weddell Sea, and as we sailed north north-west through Antarctic Sound, far away from all human civilization, a strange thing happened: my phone picked up a weak signal, probably bouncing off of the Argentine research station at Esperanza, there on the shores of the sound. I was able to get off a very brief call home to my family: it was the night before Christmas Eve.
We spent Christmas Eve sailing through the Bransfield Straight, with a rosy alpenglow warming the snow-covered mountains of the South Shetlands off our starboard bow, and flurries turning those crewmembers standing their trick at the wheel or on lookout into temporary snowmen. A fitting scene to accompany the tiny Christmas tree erected in the deckhouse and the faint sounds of carols wafting out to those on deck. After celebrating Christmas day amongst the Gentoo penguins of Half Moon Island, we came to our final destination on Saint Stephen’s day: Deception Island. In short, Deception Island is the remains of a massive volcano, with one wall of the caldera having collapsed, allowing the ocean to rush in and fill the center; the eruption of the original volcano having happened so long ago that there are glaciers over its heights, and now in the present day, the bizarre set of topographical factors causes the weather inside the caldera of Deception Island to be different from that on the outside. Perhaps the most dramatic moment of our visit was sailing through the gap in the caldera walls, known as Neptune’s Bellows, an apt name given the powerful winds that often pour off the high glaciers and blast out from that channel. It was with a mixed sense of regret that we departed Deception Island: though we were sad to leave, we were all also excited because we were now homeward bound.
After a relatively calm crossing of the Drake Passage, with a nod to a largely mist-shrouded Cape Horn, we hove to at the mouth of the Beagle Channel. Perhaps one of my favorite moments of the whole voyage consisted of me, clinging to Europa’s dizzily-swaying main top-gallant yard, attempting to furl the sail, all while being buffeted by frigid gusts of wind and mildly blinded by the rising sun: like the voyage at large, the best moments contained elements of danger and discomfort, which made the adventure all the more poignant. My shipmates and I spent these last days at sea pondering our recent shared experiences: though we were a diverse band, we were united by our common love of the sea and of the adventures she brings. My voyage with Europa came to an end in Ushuaia, Tierra Del Fuego, a town that claims the honor of being the southernmost city on Earth, the “End of the World”.
I suppose that means we sailed over the edge of the world and back again; I think we all brought back something back with us, perhaps difficult to reduce to a single word, but the sentiment is well captured by John Masefield’s poem, “Sea Fever”:
I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.
Author note: Upon further research into Europa’s pedigree, being designed to withstand the brutal and often icy conditions of the North Sea at the mouth of the Elbe estuary, I have realized that any concerns I may have had about encountering ice in the Antarctic were more imagined than real. Nonetheless, if my misconception added to my sense of the adventure, then I shall revel in it, at least temporarily.
Bio: Shanahan first discovered his love for maritime adventure while working on Alaskan fishing boats during college summers. Later this year, Shanahan will be at sea again, first with a voyage across the Great Lakes with the top-sail schooner, Pride of Baltimore II, and then with Europa again, sailing from the Azores to Amsterdam, where Europa will participate in the largest tall ship regatta in the world, SAIL Amsterdam.
This article originally appeared in Trivium Magazine Issue 05 – Summer 2025: Sailing.
