On the night of 26 June 1966 the main accommodation building on the island, known as Marion House, burnt to the ground. One of the consequences of the fire was the loss of all the team photographs from 1948 onwards that were mounted inside the building’s lounge. For several years the Antarctic Legacy of South Africa (ALSA) and its precursor project have been tracking down these missing photographs from old team members or their descendants and then taking them south to add to the team photos in the hub’s ground floor in the new base.
Up until the end of last year only four team photos of the lost 20-odd remained to be found: for M6, M7, M16 and M17 (click here). Good news is that now only three are needed to complete the collection as the team photo for M7 (April – October 1951, then known as the “Sixth Relief”) was posted to the Marion Island Facebook Group by Dave Barnes, whose Father-in-Law was M7 team member Bernie Schaaf (front left in the photo).
M7’s team photo was taken south on this year’s relief by ALSA’s Anche Louw and mounted in its place with all the others by Giel Louw and members of his National Department of Public Works’ maintenance team. The NDPW kindly made a frame on the island as although a request by ALSA for some new frames was made to the Directorate: Southern Oceans & Antarctic Support of the Department of Environmental Affairs, in the event none was taken south.
With luck the last three team photographs will come to light in time and complete an important historical record of 72 teams on the island. Any help will be appreciated.
With thanks to Dave Barnes, Tegan Carpenter-King, Anche Louw, Giel Louw, Nazoor Mentoor, Adenaan Petersen and Pierre Snyman.
Feature photograph: Adenaan Petersen, Giel Louw and Nazoor Mentoor of the National Department of Public Works, taken by Anche Louw
John Cooper, Principal Investigator, Antarctic Legacy of South Africa, Department of Botany and Zoology, Stellenbosch University, 21 May 2016
