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Whalers Bay
Deception Island. South Shetlands. Off Antarctic Pennisula.
The building and tanks on shore were originally a whale processing facility (perhaps from around 1900-1920). Later, in World War II, it became a (very small) British military base (this may have been called their Base B). The British had about 20 bases (named for letters, A to Z, but apparently they did not use some of the intermediate letters, since they had less than 26 bases).
It is all in ruins now. There were some graves here too, with (if I recall correctly) three visible markers (but the I seem to recall hearing the number of graves is more like 10 or 12 -- some may have been unmarked or else the markers have vanished with time, storms, and volcanic activity).
(26 Nov 2010)
Apparently, many of the metal tanks were intially used in the whale processing, but were later used for avaition fuel and heating oil for the British base.
Apparently, the British somehow had the idea the Nazis might invade Artarctica, so their bases were basically lookout stations. I suspect the only country anyone would imagine would possilby would want to invade Antarctica would be Nazi Germany (and the British are the only nation that would seriously expect them to do it).
The volcano still has occasional activity. Some of the damage to the buildings and storage tanks on the island was said to caused by volcanic activity (which would include seismic activity before and during eruptions).
Volcanis activity apparently also included mudslides. As I envisioned the process, heated rocks for volcanic activity (such as steam vents and hot springs) could melt or soften show up at higher elevations. This could, in turn, lead to formation of a pool of mud up there, which could become unstable and flow down the steep inner caldera wall. The mud flow coulld be triggered by seismic activity related to the volcanic activity, but that was probably not a necessary step in the process.
