The Ship Sunk By A Party
Whaling was a big industry in the early part of the 1900s, and the waterways around Antarctica attracted their share of whalers. It wasn't always easy/practical to build processing facilities on land, so very large ships were made into floating whale-processing factories. These factories were designed to render whales to produce whale oil and other useful items.
Legend has it that the crew of the Norwegian cattle-carrier-turned-floating-whaling-factory Governoren was having a party to celebrate the end of a season when a lamp was knocked over near a vat of whale oil. The whale oil caught fire and quickly became out of control. With no way to extinguish the fire, the captain decided all he could do to save his crew was ground the ship.
The Governoren came to rest in the shallow waters of Foyn Harbor/Enterprise Island (in Wilhelmina Bay, adjacent to the gorgeous Lemaire Channel) on January 27, 1915. All 85 crew members escaped without injury and were rescued by another whaling ship.
