First view of Henderson Island. Northwestern coast here.

12 April 1999

We anchored at Henderson this morning about 0730. We dropped anchor at the extreme western end of the north coast of the island. This morning, about 0900, Shane and most of the Marine Expedition crew took a Zodiac and went ashore at the standard landing site to check things out before they committed passengers to a landing. They didn’t like what they saw. Normally, I think the weather approaches this area from the Southwest but today, the wind was coming straight down from the north and, since we were going to land on the northern side of Henderson, we were getting the wind driven swells at the landing site. That’s my theory of why the landing site was bad today. In any case, they had no problem getting ashore but they had a hell of a time getting off again. Both Steve and Shane each got sucked out to sea by the rips while they were trying to get the Zodiac out again and each had quite a swim to get back. The problem was that once ashore, the breakers kept rolling in one after the other without a break they could use to get back out again. It took them 20 minutes to make it out to sea again. We watched a lot of this long-distance via binoculars from the ship.

Shane told us by radio that the landing there was off for the day and that they were going to head eastward around the cape there to see if there might be a landing spot there and off they went. I was drowsy at that point and all packed and ready to go so I went and lay down on my bunk and snoozed until they made their next announcement.

Henderson Island is quite different from Ducie. Ducie was a coral atoll. These form when a mid oceanic volcanic peak gets a ring of coral around it and then the peak slowly erodes away or subsides and only the coral ring or atoll remains. Henderson was such an atoll at one time (four by six miles in size) but the theory is that when the volcano that made Pitcairn Island came up, it caused the tectonic plate under Henderson to rise. The result is that Henderson is now a flat plateau of limestone (old coral) 100 feet above the sea and what had been its central lagoon is on top and dry. The island’s periphery is about 90 to 95% sheer 100 foot cliffs undercut dramatically by the sea and in many places carved with giant water level caves and blowholes. The remaining 5 to 10% of the coast is made of sandy beaches behind wicked coral reef approaches. It was at the largest of these beaches on the north coast, that Shane and crew tried to land this morning.

We could see a grove of palm trees behind this morning’s landing site. The ME crew had already told us that there was a steep trail up from behind the grove to the top of the plateau. From there a trail had been hacked into the interior. Apparently, the brush is so thick up top that getting off the trail is not much of an option. The original plan for the day was to go ashore at 0900 to 1000 and then be off by 1900 that evening. It didn’t work out that way.

An aside - I just went up topside to see what the weather’s doing. I gave my new Dutch Harbor outfit a good testing out. The warm rain is driving so hard, I couldn’t keep my eyes open in that direction for long. I also now know what the expression, “the wind in the rigging” means though it is perhaps not the same rigging that the old sailors were referring to. It was a gas. The waves haven’t come up much yet but I could see from the wind direction indicator that the darkest clouds off to the northwest are bearing down on us. I may get the storm I’ve always wanted yet. Though I hope it doesn’t wash out our Pitcairn landing. That would really be a shame.

Well, back to the story of what happened today at Henderson Island.

Shane and crew came back from their reconnoitering of the western cape and said that while we couldn’t land, those of us who wanted to could go in Zodiacs and that we’d go along the coast and have a closer look at the island. I think that of 35 of us, only four elected to stay aboard the Academic Shuleykin.

We grabbed pre-made sandwiches and filled our water bottles and loaded up. I was on the first zodiac loaded. There were eight to 10 passengers and two crew. Our driver was Sergei, the Russian radio operator who some of the passengers think is a bit of a hotrodder as a Zodiac pilot - but I like him. Matt from the ME crew was also along. He and Jayne are the one’s who loaned me the short wave I listen to VOA and BBC on most nights.

The plan was to go around the Northwestern cape and run along the cliffs on the Western side of the island for awhile so we could get the drift of the place. It was fascinating. Huge rollers would swell past us and run on in and smash into the cliffs and pour into the huge caves and blast back out again. Large reflection waves would often come back at us from the cliffs as well. We had four Zodiacs. Three had 8 passengers each plus crew and one had Shane and Steve and two Russians. As I said, along most of the coast, there is no place to land. You’d be better to just keep swimming along beside the island than to try to go ashore on most of it. With sheer 100 foot cliffs deeply indented at the bottom, you’d either be chewed to shreds but the waves and coral or, if you were lucky, you might make it up onto a pile of rubble or onto a high spot in a cave and then where would you go? It would be ugly. I had cause to think about this more later.

At first we stayed out from the cliffs a ways but then Shane, who has been driving boats since he was 8, and it really shows in his skill, took his Zodiac in closer to have a better look at some of the remarkable caves and features. Sergei then took us in closer too. With Matt watching closely over the front so that we didn’t discover a coral head the hard way, we cruised in and out and along the coast working our way south along the western side of the island. I had my camera along. Normally, in the Zodiac, I have it inside a sealed plastic bag as insurance against us getting flipped or a large wave from coming in and dousing us. Today, however, I was taking a bit more of a chance since I wanted to get some photos of the stuff I was seeing.

The cliffs and caves and waves and everything were so dramatic that I shot quite a few photos until I finally decided I was being redundant. Even so, every once in awhile, another scene would appear so much cooler than the last that I’d whip the camera out again and fire away. We came to two or three places where the waves would force themselves into a narrow space with such force that a huge spray would erupt straight up like a geyser with a huge could of accompanying mist and sound. They reminded me of a place on the Baja California coast called La Bufadora (the blowhole).

At another place, when a large roller would crash into the cliffs, a truly awesome sound would result. At first we thought it was just the force of the surf against the cliffs but then we began to realize that the sound was being naturally amplified. Many of the cliffs are riddled with caves and many of these are undoubtedly interconnected. In this case, the surf would pour into a cavern and create a huge roar and the sound would go up through the wall and come back out directed at us from several large cave openings there. Theresa named the place “Dragon Breath”. The sound it made was quite impressive.

We continued for quite a ways and then Shane radioed that perhaps we should get together and do some transfers as some folks wanted to circumnavigate the entire island and other felt they’d seen enough. There was some radio chatter but nothing seemed to get decided and we kept meandering on southward down the western coast. On our Zodiac, there were only two of us who clearly wanted to go on and the rest felt they’d rather turn back. I was thinking that I was about to experience my first inter-Zodiac transfer at sea. Big fun so long as I could keep the camera out of the water.

But we kept wandering and looking until, after another 20 minutes or so, Shane called us all on the radios again and focused on the question of who wanted to do what. The discussion didn’t get far until someone asked how far we’d come now and various opinions were kicked around until the consensus was that we were almost halfway now. At that point, it seemed foolish not to just all continue together since, if the estimate was right, it was as far one way now as the other. Once this was decided, we all took off again.

We kept on and after awhile we rounded a cape (probably the southwest cape) and the seas became a good deal rougher and spray started to come across all of us much more often. I put the camera securely into its belt holder and slid it around on my waist until it was on the opposite side from where the spray was coming from.

My sense was that the trip’s nature changed subtly at this point from a journey to see the sights to a journey to make it back to the ship. The waves were bigger and we were farther from shore and the things the coast was showing us were not so much different from what it had already shown us. We drove on for a long time fighting the bounce of the Zodiac as it fought its way through the sea. About this time, we ran out of gas and the engine sputtered to a stop. We had an entire second container which was full and it only took a moment to make the change over but, still, it was a thoughtful moment as I looked at the surf crashing against the line of sheer coral cliffs not more than one or two hundred yards from us that stretched both ways as far as I could see. Sergei got us restarted and we pressed on.

On and on we drove through the waves hanging on to the ropes on the sides of the Zodiac. We came to another cape (probably the southeastern cape) and as we neared it, the waves built and built as the sea became focused trying to make its ways around the point of land jutting out. We were riding our way up and down large waves that seemed to come from all directions as the passed us and reflected off the point. Some of the other Zodiacs were in sight but they remained at a long distance away. We fought our way around the cape and I half way expected to see the Academic Shuleykin then but all that greeted us was another long stretch of coast. All the way up the coast (the western side of the island) we could see the seas and they looked fairly rough though not nearly as bad as they’d been rounding the cape.

The trip up the west coast seemed very long to me. Most of us were uncomfortable by now from sitting in awkward manners. In a Zodiac, the front is always higher than the back and you also have to lean inward and hold onto a rope that loops along the outside top of the Zodiac. You lean in because otherwise, you may be tossed out when you hit the next wave as they can hit, sometimes quite by surprise, from most any direction though usually they come from the front. Zodiacs are fairly light and they bounce quite a bit and they zoom across the waves. I was worried that my back would become cramped since I was sitting unevenly and under constant strain. Also, after an hour or two of bouncing up and down, your but becomes quite tired of it all. One good thing was that we are all, apparently, fully acclimated to the sea’s motion because in the three and a half hours we slammed, plunged, rocked and bobbed, no one felt motion sick that I was aware of.

After an interminably long time, we finally made it up the west coast and approached what I hoped would be the last cape before we’d see the Academic Shuleykin. I wasn’t really sightseeing during this stretch other than an occasional glance at the cliffs. I spent most of my time shifting around to get comfortable and to relieve tired muscles. Given that the other Zodiacs were just on the edge of being visible and given that the seas were high, I spent some time looking at the cliffs, which were all sheer and deadly along this entire coast. I was reflecting that everything depended on the motor continuing to run and on our not capsizing.

There was a light moment along this stretch. Matt said that he had to make a call of nature and that it couldn’t wait any longer so he had Sergei stop the boat and he climbed over the side into the water so he could pee. Then, once he was in and the cold water hit him, he said he couldn’t so we all waiting for several minutes until his system sorted out its priorities and he climbed back into the Zodiac and we were off again.

As we finally approached the cape, the seas began to get high again. Higher even than the previous cape’s waves had been. Sergei cut the cape fairly close too. The other Zodiacs rounded it quite a bit farther out than we did. It is really amazing how the sea acts at a cape like this. The waves come from several directions and they add and subtract to each other in unpredictable ways. At one point, I saw several waves suddenly ‘add’ to each other and the water just seemed to rise straight up near the actual cape itself. About this time I noted that out Zodiac was beginning to take water in. We’d been told, in our Zodiac briefing, that Zodiacs could be full of water and still float fine. We’d also been told that they have five separate air compartments and even if one is holed, the boat will still perform reasonably. Given all of this, I wasn’t unduly worried about the water sloshing in the back. It did seem to be weighing us down and making the stern even lower in the water than it normally is and it also seemed to be slowing our speed. The net was it was a slow slog around the cape with lots of water for everyone inside the Zodiac and flying over and into it and a view of the wild crashing surf to our left reminding us of the power of the water.

Some few minutes after we cleared the cape proper and the seas calmed a bit, three things happened. One, we spotted the Academic Shuleykin far down anchored off the next cape. We’d just cleared the northeast cape and she was sitting down off the northwestern cape of Henderson Island. Two, Ron Wyman, sitting across from me looked at me and then looked significantly at the gas container we were running on. It was floating in the water sloshing at the back of the Zodiac. The remarkable thing was not that it was floating but how high it was floating. For it to be floating that high, it could only have two or three inches of gasoline remaining in it and it was a long way to the Shuleykin. The third thing that I noted, though it wasn’t nearly so pressing, was that behind the Shuleykin, the sky was beginning to look quite dark. It had been three and a half hours since we set out and the weather was changing.

I think I began to feel a sense of concern at this point that wasn’t just based on things that might happen. It was beginning to be based on things that had an increasing probability of actually happening. The good news was that the north coast has about half of its length composed of sand beaches behind reef approaches. This, of course, was a whole lot more palatable than a sheer 100 foot cliffs of pounding surf and razor sharp coral. We drove on and on and the boat seemed to get more and more sluggish as more water came is and we had to lug the additional weight. Sergei had the motor cranked up to full power and it was stirring up a lot of froth behind us but we weren’t moving particularly fast. At this point, we were far ahead of the other two Zodiacs with passengers and Shane, who had been in sight of us, though distantly, until now, decided to double back and to check on the other Zodiacs so we were now in the final stretch alone towards the Shuleykin.

Sergei was cutting a direct course for the ship and 100 to 150 yards to our left was the morning’s original prospective landing site. I was thinking that if we lost power, we’d at least have a good chance to get ashore there with only a few cuts from the coral. Beyond this beach was a small cape off which the ship was moored. The seas off this cape were not wild as they were at some of the other capes, which is probably why we anchored there. The cape, however, was a rocky escarpment with jagged boulders in the surf.

Just as I thought we were surely going to make it, the gasoline ran out and we were adrift. The irony of it. We’d come all the way around the entire island to lose power 100 years from the ship and 150 years off the surf and the cape. At this point, none of the other Zodiacs were in sight of us. We looked around and found that our Zodiac was equipped with one oar. Sergei radioed the ship and told them our state. People were at the rails looking down at us. We were so close that I wasn’t very concerned but I was wondering if we were in a current and which way it was going to draw us and how fast. Apparently Sergei wondered too as he picked up the single oar and climbed to the front of the Zodiac and tried to paddle as best he could. Several of us leaned over the sides and began to hand paddle the Zodiac towards the ship. This went on for several minutes until we got the clear sense that if anything we were slowly drifting closer to the ship so we didn’t need to be particularly concerned.

It crossed my mind several times during the last 15 minutes of this adventure that we were far ahead of the other two passenger carrying Zodiacs (including the one carrying Gertraude) and, if we were having fuel supply problems, they might also have them and be in a less favorable position when their fuel ran out. I was also remembering that just last year a passenger died here when a Zodiac flipped during an aborted landing attempt. As much as we’d all like to treat all of this as a harmless adventure, things could be very serious indeed with just one or two miscalculations or oversights.

Things sorted themselves out perfectly in rapid order, however. First Jeff came by in his Zodiac and wanted to know why we were bobbing about there and we told him and then he asked if we had any Grey Pupon and gave us a big grin and said that as soon as he could off load his passengers, he’d be back. While he was unloading, Shane arrived and threw us a rope and laughed at us a bit and towed us over to the ship where we all disembarked after our bigger than expected adventure. In a few minutes, Theresa’s Zodiac showed up with Gertraude and the others and everything ended quite well.

It all turned out well and everyone made fairly light of it but I think it was dicey for a bit at least for our Zodiac. Dicey and exciting. I hadn’t expected to be out there thinking to myself as to what my real life and death options might be if our fuel ran out at this point or at that point. I wasn’t particularly scared but I definitely felt a sense of intensity about our little Zodiac run around Henderson Island. Shane told us later that so far as they know, no one has circumnavigated Henderson before in Zodiacs. It was a good day and an intense one. Oh, and it began to rain pretty intensely not long after we pulled anchor and departed from Henderson.

Tomorrow, we’ll awake to find ourselves anchored off Pitcairn Island, which is one of the major destinations of this entire trip. Hopefully, tonight’s storm will blow over so we can make a landing.

Please note that all the photos I've uploaded concerning Henderson Island have been located APPROXIMATELY around the island. It's been nine years since these were shot so I'm guessing on some of the physical locations.

nice job.. upload more plz...

confirmation me if u ulpoad again . rudhie_05@yahoo.com.au

Nice job!

We are prepearing to visit Henderson coming Feb. would appreciate any info from your so, please contact me ra6lbs (at)gmail.com

I read your comments with interest. Not sure if you're aware, but Henderson is the island upon which the survivors from the shipwreck Essex (the ship attacked by a whale that inspired Herman Melville's 'Moby Dick') landed. 3 of the men survived on the island for several months, and also discovered the remains of 8 unknown persons stranded from another shipwreck, the 'Elizabeth'. An amazing account was written by the first mate, Owen Chase. When the three surviving whaling boats left the island (leaving the 3 men behind), most did not survive, with those that did having to resort to cannibalism. Seeing your photos, the events described are made much more vivid.

what is up with the time at the bottem!!

Czentner, that's interesting information that I didn't know about Henderson Island - thanks! I just went off and did some fascinating reading based on your information.

Amm4eva, the date on the bottom of the photo is, indeed, when I shot it in 1999.

Cheers, Dennis

wow that so cool!!