On the eve of 16 December, the Bob Barker sails into the southern part of the Banzare Bank. The ocean around him seems untouched by time, but on the map Hammarstedt can read fragments of the continent’s history. He sees remnants of greedy ambitions and incredible heroism: stretches of open sea, hills and mountainsides that have been named after wives and mistresses, rulers, patrons, heroes who froze to death, or sheer hallucinations.
The Banzare Bank was discovered and named by the Australian polar hero Douglas Mawson. On his first large-scale expedition to Antarctica, Mawson spent two winters at a stony outpost that turned out to be the windiest place on earth. During a sledding trip he lost two members of his team. When Mawson set out on his next expedition from Cape Town in October 1929, the “heroic” era of explorations of the Antarctic had come to an end. But there were still large white patches on the map.
The Banzare expedition’s express objective was scientific, but in reality it would undercut “aggressive” Norwegian expeditions and territorial claims.9 In January, Mawson met the Norvegia expedition led by the Norwegian pilot and polar pioneer Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen. The two agreed to explore the Antarctic, each on their respective side of the 45th parallel, an agreement that is considered to be the first international treaty in Antarctica.
Peter Hammarstedt’s hope is that clear regulations and agreements will also be imposed on modern day fishing and environmental protection – and that somebody will ensure their compliance.
The Swedish captain guides the ship into the shelter of an ice tongue to protect it from the swells rolling in from the west. He will commence the search from here. First, he will sail directly into the middle of the bank and then cross it from west to east. It will take two weeks to cover the entire area, the radar will pick up on each and every movement within 12 nautical miles, and the light of the Antarctic summer will allow him to search around the clock. Hammarstedt knows the fishing vessels he is chasing have probably also posted a sentry who is monitoring the radar and that the Bob Barker could be detected long before they gain any actual visual contact with a vessel. He has, however, studied the six ships thoroughly and believes the Bob Barker with its 3,000 horsepower is faster than they are.
When he assembles the crew in the lounge, a number of them are wracked with seasickness.
“We will start the search from the west. Then we’ll go south towards the ice. We could come across a ship at any time. Crow’s nest watch starts tonight. Action station drill after lunch and first aid training after that,” Hammarstedt says.
The search will probably take several weeks.
The banks of fog rising from the ocean thicken. Every half hour Hammarstedt is on the bridge checking the radar image. It is covered with a scattering of dots – icebergs that have broken away from the Amery Ice Shelf, a gigantic platform of ice extending out from the Antarctic land mass. The only thing distinguishing an iceberg from a ship on the radar screen is the speed. If a vessel is fishing, it will move slowly, perhaps at the same pace as the icebergs. For that reason Hammarstedt wants an additional pair of eyes that can decipher the objects picked up by the radar.
The weather hits harder in the crow’s nest than anywhere else on the ship. The person standing at the top of the mast has nothing more than a thin steel shield for protection from the wind. This individual must constantly scan the water surface in search of ships and net floats. One is more likely to spot something from the corner of the eye than straight ahead in one’s field of vision. Most of the crew members volunteer for a shift in the crow’s nest; everyone wants to be the first one to spot the Thunder.
Forty to fifty objects are now visible on the radar. It’s like staring at a pepperoni pizza and the bridge sentry calls up to the watchstander in the crow’s nest constantly, reporting the direction and distance to whatever cannot be identified on the radar. But the only thing in sight is the glassy ocean and an iceberg drifting in and out of the fog. One day after they have commenced the search, the Bob Barker is located 300 nautical miles from Davis Bay and 150 nautical miles from the ice edge.
“We could find them at any minute,” Hammarstedt says.
On the radar, Hammarstedt suddenly sees one of the slowly floating dots move in the opposite direction, away from the icebergs’ sluggish trajectory. It is maintaining a speed of six knots on a course headed southwest. It has to be a ship. Has the ship seen the Bob Barker? Should he change course to cut them off or will that attract attention?
A few minutes later, in the crow’s nest, the seaman Jeremy Tonkin spots three orange, interlinked fishing buoys bobbing in the ocean on the starboard side of the Bob Barker. It is very likely that they belong to an illegal fishing vessel, Hammarstedt thinks. As soon as there is visual contact from the bridge with the unknown vessel, he tells the crew to stand by.
The ship is enveloped in fog when he first catches sight of it.
“That’s a fishing boat,” Hammarstedt says.
“Oh yeah,” first mate and second-in-command Adam Meyerson confirms. “It looks very much like the Thunder, Peter. It’s got the same paint configuration and the forward bridge.”
From photographs Meyerson is able to recognize the outline of the vessel now emerging out of the mist, its protruding wheelhouse and the characteristic steep stern of the old trawler.
The jovial first mate grew up with the sea as his neighbour in San Francisco. He sailed from California to Hawaii in a small, single-mast sailboat as a 27-year-old and has
