Developing a Signy Stories Page

It had been suggested that this website should not only help with connecting the community, but could also usefully complement existing sources for Signy information/articles and grips (see below *).  The Stories web page here is our first effort to develop a platform for short articles, reminiscences and images sent to us by Signy Fids.  The Marguerite Bay website is a recent example of how stories and imagery can be usefully brought together to develop an unofficial history.

Some of the entries under the Stories tab have already featured in either Signy Reunion magazines or in a BAS Club Newsletter and have been uploaded to start things off but we would welcome further contributions from anyone who has worked on Signy Island since its inception to the current day.  It is hoped that these stories and images, coupled with information we hope to garner from BAS Archives, will be of interest to the Signy community and their families.   

The contact email address for submissions is signyfids(@sign)gmail.com.  

If you have large image files to send us, either on their own or as part of an article we can provide details of how these files can be easily transferred online rather than sending them as attachments to your email messages as email apps often do not like large attachments.

The stories are organised into decades to help readers get to the relevant era easily.  

Click on the links below to get to a relevant Stories page 

 

Timeline 1950’s 1980′s
Pre – 1947 1960’s 1990’s
1947-49 1970’s 2000 on

 

*For those looking for tales or images of Fids living and working on Signy Island there are already some sources online. 

    • The BAS Club’s magazines often feature accounts of life on the various British research stations and ships in Antarctica, past and present.  These have included some articles about Signy Station and these can be accessed online by members through the BASC website.
       
    • Signy Fid Paul Ward set up his Cool Antarctica website around 2001 and has grown it into an impressively large and diverse source of information and images on all things Antarctic (and some Arctic).  It includes an excellent library of Signy imagery through the decades which those who attended the 2008 and 2018 Reunions will recall provided excellent entertainment over those weekends.

    • British Antarctic Survey website which includes blogs from the current summer-only station.

There are also hardcopy sources (though not necessarily easy to obtain in some cases) such as:

    • A Concise Account of Signy Island Base H (ed. by David Rootes) which was produced for the 40th Anniversary Signy Reunion.

    • The magazines published for the 50th, 60th and 71st Anniversary Reunions.  The latter two were edited by Bob Burton.