A recently-discovered financial balance sheet, accounting for the first four years’ transactions of the Hull Whale Fishery Company (1754–1757), adds detail to present knowledge of British Arctic whaling economics during the early years of the industry. This article summarises previously-known information on the Company and its four ships, and provides transcripts of the balance sheet covering the profits and losses of the early voyages. Based on tabulated details from the transcripts, and additional data from Customs records and muster rolls, it discusses ships, crews, voyages, catches and expenses, the products of oil and baleen, and the profits derived from them. It makes brief comparisons with similar data from Bristol and Exeter in the formative years of the industry, and draws attention to the key significance of the 40 shilling (£2) bounty during the early years.

The loss of the expedition ship SY Endurance, and the subsequent dispersal of staff and crew, resulted in very little scientific information emerging from the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition 1914–1917. Among surviving records were the charts and diaries maintained by the ship's master, F.A. Worsley. During the voyage in January 1915 along the ice cliffs of the Weddell Sea coast, Worsley recorded the ship's daily progress, soundings and trawling and dredging activities, and also daily encounters with seals, whales and seabirds, On 12 January he noted a group of fledgling emperor penguin chicks (Aptenodytes forsteri) on an ice foot, clearly a remnant of what was then only the third-known breeding colony of the species. Shackleton's first published account of the expedition mentioned the chicks only in a brief note (one that was omitted from later editions), and no further report covering Worsley's observations appeared in scientific literature. In consequence the discovery of the breeding colony and records of emperor penguin distribution along the Weddell Sea coast have since been overlooked by avian biologists, regrettably including the present author. This paper discusses the identity of the colony, Worsley's observations that foreshadowed the later discovery of more breeding concentrations along the coast, and a possible reason why colonies occur at points of particular glaciological disturbance.

Geoffrey Francis Hattersley-Smith (‘Geoff’), who died on 21 July 2012, served for many years as a polar field scientist, contributing substantially to glaciological and geological surveys in both north and south polar regions. In later life he undertook research in another discipline altogether – the sorting and cataloguing of polar place names – an achievement in scholarship for which all other polar researchers may be thankful.

William Harvie (‘Tommy’) Thomson, DSC (1922–2012) was born in Airdrie, Lanarkshire, Scotland on 13 September 1922. Following distinguished service as a Fleet Air Arm pilot in World War II, he joined the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (FIDS) in 1946, serving in 1947–1948 at Base E (Stonington Island) as pilot of the Survey's newly-acquired Auster aircraft.

David Geoffrey Dalgliesh, naval surgeon was born on 22 March 1922 to Kenneth and Ellen Dalgliesh. With three sisters and a younger brother he grew up in Sidcup, Kent, in semi-rural surroundings of gardens, fields and woodlands where he developed a lasting love of natural history. Aged nine he learnt woodwork, a manual skill that re-emerged later in his gift for surgery. He attended Merchant Taylor's School until 1939, taking the 1st MB examination in preparation for entering medical school. When World War II began in September 1939 he was of military age but compulsorily reserved as a future doctor. After a gap year as agricultural labourer, fire watcher and founder member of the Local Defence Volunteers (forerunner of the Home Guard), David joined St Thomas's Hospital Medical School in 1940. His early months of study coincided with the London blitz, in which every city hospital was fully involved and severely tested. Later he served in emergency dressing stations, set up in southern England to treat casualties returning from the Normandy invasion. On graduating MRCS and LRCP in 1946, David had gained an unusual but invaluable practical training in emergency medicine.

This paper identifies and discusses terminology used in discussion of disturbance, damage, and rehabilitation in frozen soils and related ecosystems, and provides a vocabulary that may help scientists from different disciplines to identify management objectives and reach common purposes.

During every austral summer since the International Geophysical Year 1957–58 several thousand scientists and support staff have worked in Antarctica. A more recent development is the annual advent of 4000–5000 tourists, who now probably outnumber expedition members in the area covered by the Antarctic Treaty System. Most tourists come by ship, visiting coastal areas of the Antarctic Peninsula and the South Orkney and South Shetland islands that arc readily accessible beween November and March: smaller numbers visit the Ross Dependency and Adelie Land sectors. This article reviews Antarctic Treaty and International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) attitudes to tourism, and outlines a preliminary study of shipborne tourism between late December 1991 and March 1992 on Half Moon Island, South Shetland Islands. Within one month (January) a survey team from the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, recorded 14 visits by six tour ships, bringing more than 2000 tourists. In addition, attitudes and expectations of visitors were studied on five ships. Arising from this study, a programme of visitor monitoring is planned as a joint project between British, Chilean, and Argentine scientific institutions during the next five years. Objectives are to find ways of minimizing both short-term and long-term impacts of tourists and other visitors on breeding birds and other ecological communities, and to provide a factual basis for regulation under the Antarctic Treaty System.