Page 12 - Willem Barentsz

The chief R/O in the plotting room and one of the two third R/O’s in the radio room for the
communications and administration.

Plotting room

If there was time left, there was always something that needed to be repaired. At eight o'clock in the
evening the night shift came up. The second R/O for the plot room and the other third for the radio
room and a R/O technician for the Technical Department. In the evening and at night, the catchers
came to bunker, each in turn and it was a busy time for the Technical Department. Everyone was
expected to play his part in the technical field. The tasks could therefore not be clearly defined. After
the watch had been started and it had been decided whether the main direction would be East or
West, it went in battle line in the chosen direction. Why East or West? In Cape Town, the gunners and
the expedition leader had already met to decide in principle which direction would be taken. Of
course, this involved a lot of wet finger work. To the east it was all open sea without interruption of a
group of islands with often exceptionally bad weather. Especially the tip of Enderby Land at 60
degrees East evokes associations of hurricane force for days on end, where the ship was at the mercy
of the elements. My personal preference was more for the West. Then you passed the South
Sandwich, South Orkney and the South Shetland Islands. They were not palm beaches, but they still
had a wild beauty and especially the South Sandwich was volcanically active. I remember that on my
first trip there was a large plume of smoke over Montague Island. In the "Saling Directions" the
volcano was reported as extinct, but we found that it was active again. The weather around the west
was also less rough, although there was a lot of fog.

A great season.

How much there was a luck factor in hunting we experienced in the 1959-1960 season. This time we
went around the West. We met two Norwegian expeditions, who came back. Of course, the gunners
sought contact with each other, where we learned that there was nothing to do around the West.
Still, we persevered and even went as far as Clarence and Elephant Island, which are the easternmost
islands of the South Shetlands. We were very lucky there, running day in and day out at maximum
capacity and all alone. The reason was probably that the Bransfield Strait, between Graham Land and
the South Shetlands, was not ice-free that summer and that all the fish that came out of the Weddell