MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

“Sherlock Holmes” of South Georgia

A Shackleton Scholarship has turned Bob Burton into the “Sherlock Holmes” of South Georgia, a special kind of detective delving into the Island's fascinating history and tracking down the identities of people and ships of years gone by.

Robert Burton, Director of the South Georgia Whaling Museum from 1994 to 1997, is creating what he calls a "virtual museum" -- a South Georgia History Database. He's using his scholarship to build up an archive cataloguing thousands of photographs, letters, and family keepsakes, scattered around the world in individual homes.

Most items found so far relate to whaling, going back to its earliest years at the beginning of last century. He's been logging into his "Catalist" computer museum several thousand colour transparencies taken by Nigel Bonner's successor as Seal Inspector on South Georgia, Bill Vaughan, to create a comprehensive archive of the era of Japanese whaling.

His researches have involved journeying to Norway and the Antarctic, seeking out material, whalers and ex-whalers, museum archives and newspaper files. That's where Sherlock Holmes- type qualities are needed, turning vague, tantalising clues into facts.

"Investigating photographs and the provenance of artefacts to complete their records is fascinating ", he says. "As ownership of these items passes down the generations, their significance may be forgotten and they may be thrown away. Their existence should be put on record".

Sadly he's heard of the destruction of objects connected with Ernest Shackleton that would "grace a museum or fetch a good price at auction!"

He has collected much material on Shackleton's last two expeditions on Endurance and Quest. "With Shackletonmania in full swing", he says, "this is an ideal time to seek out unrecorded material, much of it kept in family albums or stuffed away in drawers and forgotten. It is fascinating how a little detective work can reveal details such as names of people or ships and dates when photographs were taken".

He has, for example, traced the identities of witnesses to the 1928 unveiling by Falkland Islands Governor Arnold Hodson of the headstone on Shackleton's South Georgia grave shown on this fascinating photograph (Courtesy of Mrs Anne Fraser).

They included scientists and crew of the research ship William Scoresby, the only woman on South Georgia at the time, Mrs Arlberg, and Stanley Harbour Master, Commander Amadroz.

Bob Burton has also identified many photogr