Grytviken is proud of its remaining ships and this leaflet gives you some background information about them.

Petrel is the best-preserved whale-catcher at South Georgia. She was built in 1929 at Nylands Verksted in Oslo. She is 244.8 gross tons and 31.1 m (115 feet) long. Petrel was withdrawn from the whaling fleet at Grytviken in 1956 and converted to a sealing vessel the following year. This involved removing her whale-winch and replacing it with an ordinary cargo winch, creating a large cargo hatch (for loading the seal blubber), removing the gun platform and the cat-walk that connected it with the bridge on the starboard side. Petrel was one of the first catchers to be equipped with a cat-walk, which was introduced in 1926. The line-blocks were removed from the mast and a derrick installed. Despite these alterations, Petrel remains an excellent and well-preserved example of her class. She was capable of 11 knots from her 810 indicated horse-power triple-expansion engine. Her funnel has been re-painted in the Salvesen (Leith Harbour) colours, but when she was operated by Grytviken she had blue and white bands on her funnel.

The two vessels partly sunk on the far side of the main jetty are Albatros (inside) and Dias (outside). Albatros was built as a whale-catcher at Svelvik in Norway in 1921. She is 228.5 tons gross and 32.7 m (107.4 feet) long. Like Petrel, she was converted for sealing, though she never had a cat-walk. Dias (originally Viola] was built at Beverly near Hull in England in 1906 as a trawler. She whaled very briefly at Cape Lopez off the Congo, catching humpbacks. She came to South Georgia in 1927, but was only ever used as a sealer here. Dias is 166.9 tons gross and 34.1 m (112 feet) long. She, like the other ships here, was originally coal-fired, but was converted to oil in 1956. Although very slow, her large fish-hold made her a successful sealer. She even served as a supply vessel for the Argentine weather station on Laurie Island in the South Orkneys on several occasions.

A very sad memento is the burnt-out hulk that lies on the south side of the harbour in front of the cemetery. Louise (1065 tons. 52.7 m, 173 feet long) was built by Charles Bliss & Co. at Freeport, Maine, as the wooden bark Jennie S Barker in 1869 for US owners, passing to German interests in 1879 and to Norwegians in 1880 under the name Louise. Following her sale to Europe she was primarily engaged in the Baltic timber trade. In 1904 she was purchased by C A Larsen's newly- founded Compania Argentina de Pesca as the transporter to establish the whaling station at Grytviken. She sailed from Sandefjord on 23 July 1904 with the whole of the whaling factory plant and two prefabricated buildings aboard, one to house the factory equipment and the other for living quarters. She reached Grytviken on 16 November together with the whale-catcher Fortuna (some remains of which can be seen on the beach just beyond Hope Point). Louise remained afloat up to the 1920s, being used as a store hulk for coaling the whale catchers Some time before World War II she drifted into her present position. In 1987 disaster struck when she was set on fire and burnt to the waterline during an exercise by the garrison quartered at King Edward Point following the Argentine invasion of 1982. Prior to her destruction she was considered the best preserved example of a 'Down-easter', an American-built deep-water sailing vessel constructed to supplement the clipper ships in the trade around Cape Horn.

There are three other notable hulks at South Georgia. At Husvik Harbour the very early whale-catcher Karrakatta is drawn up by the catcher slipway. She was built in 1912 by the Akers Mekaniske Vaerksted in Christiania (now Oslo) for the West Australian Whaling Company.. She is 179 tons and 32.4 m (106 feet) long and her engines devekfped 69 horse-power! She was purchased by the Tonsberg iling Company and at some unknown date drawn up on the slip to used to provide steam for the winch there. A hole cut in her side provided access to the boiler room.

Brutus lies at Prince Olav Harbour. She is an iron three-masted sailing vessel, built in 1883 by J Reid & Co. at Glasgow, Scotland, as the Sierra Pedrosa for the Sierra shipping Company. In 1902 she was sold to the Brutus Shipping Company and re-named. She was driven ashore and stranded at Salt River, Cape Town, while on passage from London. (She had been stranded in the same place in 1889 under her original name, but salvaged). She was refloated and used as a cold-storage hulk in Luderitz Bay. In 1917 she was sold to the Southern Whaling & Sealing Company and in February 1918 she arrived at Prince Olav Harbour, under tow of the whale-catchers Traveller and Truls. She remained in use as a coaling hulk until the station closed in 1931.

Bayard, ashore on the southern side of Ocean Harbour, is another three-masted sailing vessel. She was built by T Vernon & Son of Liverpool in 1864. In 1910 she was sold to the Ocean Whaling Company and converted to a store ship. She arrived at Ocean Harbour in the 1910-11 season but in June of 1911 broke loose from her mooring at the coaling pier and ran aground to her present position.

Kilde: South Georgia Whaling Museum – Nigel Bonner