Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey

Abstract

The Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey has recently acquired a vessel to enable it to carry out its expanding field of work in the Antarctic. The ship, which was named John Biscoe by Mrs. Creech Jones, wife of the Secretary of State for the Colonies, on December 16, has a double-skin wooden hull and a displacement of 1,015 tons; she is driven by Diesel-electric power. She carries a crew of twenty-five, and is to take a relief party in the summer to replace about half the party at present occupying the seven observation stations maintained by the Survey in the Antarctic. The new party will carry out geological, meteorological and zoological investigations, and is under the leadership of Dr. V. E. Fuchs, a geologist who has had experience of exploration in East Greenland and in East Africa. The John Briscoe has been named memory of the discoverer of the southern part of Graham Land. The Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (see Nature, March 22, p. 388) was set up under the control of the Colonial Office after the War to take over from the Admiralty the meteorological stations established in the Antarctic in 1943.