Ocean Harbour ( es, Puerto Nueva Fortuna) is a deeply indented
bay on
Barff Peninsula
Barff Peninsula () is a peninsula forming the east margin of Cumberland East Bay, South Georgia Island. It is long and extends northwest from Sörling Valley to Barff Point, its farthest extremity. It was probably first seen by the British e ...
on the north coast of
South Georgia which is entered west-northwest of
Tijuca point. It was a whaling station between 1909 and 1920. At one point, South Georgia was the whaling capital of the world.
The names New Fortune Bay and Neufortuna Bay, probably for the whaling catcher ''Fortuna'' (owned by the Norwegian-Argentine whaling company Pesca), were used for this site in 1922 by Filchner, following the
German Antarctic Expedition, 1911–12. In 1951–52 the island was surveyed by the South Georgia Survey who reported the site was known to whalers and sealers as Ocean Harbour, a name derived from the
Ocean Whaling Co. which at one time had a station there. The name Ocean Harbour is approved for this feature on the basis of local usage, and also to avoid confusion of the name New Fortuna Bay with
Fortuna Bay
Fortuna Bay () is a bay long and wide. Its entrance is defined by Cape Best on the west and Robertson Point to the east, near Atherton Peak on the north coast of South Georgia. It was named after the ''Fortuna'', one of the ships of the Norwegia ...
, only to the northwest.
History
Old sealing
trypot
A try pot is a large pot used to remove and render the oil from blubber obtained from cetaceans (whales and dolphins) and pinnipeds (seals), and also to extract oil from penguins. Once a suitable animal such as a whale had been caught and kil ...
s can still be seen here, and there is also the wreck of the ''
Bayard
Bayard may refer to:
People
* Bayard (given name)
* Bayard (surname)
*Pierre Terrail, seigneur de Bayard (1473–1524) French knight
Places
* Bayard, Delaware, an unincorporated community
*Bayard (Jacksonville), Florida, a neighborhood
* Bayard ...
'' here, a 1,300 tonne, long, iron-hulled boat, built in 1864. She was moored at the coaling station at 1911 when a gale blew her loose across the bay. Ocean Harbour was the site of the first introduction of
reindeer
Reindeer (in North American English, known as caribou if wild and ''reindeer'' if domesticated) are deer in the genus ''Rangifer''. For the last few decades, reindeer were assigned to one species, ''Rangifer tarandus'', with about 10 sub ...
to South Georgia by Pesca's whaling station manager
Carl Anton Larsen
Carl Anton Larsen (7 August 1860 – 8 December 1924) was a Norwegian-born whaler and Antarctic explorer who made important contributions to the exploration of Antarctica, the most significant being the first discovery of fossils for which ...
and his brother in November 1911.
Ocean Harbour has a small cemetery with eight graves including the oldest known grave on the island – that of Frank Cabrial (1820) of the sealer ''Francis Allen''. The marker has gone though some of the others are still marked.
References
Bays of South Georgia
Whaling stations of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands
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