The eerie, abandoned island that has long played tricks on visitors

Antarctica had been playing tricks since day one; from phantom islands to frozen rivers to icebergs glowing like neon, everything deceives. But the biggest illusion comes on our final day – a slow cruise into a wall of cliffs.

Like most of the South Shetland Islands, Deception Island gives little away; just rock and shadow rising from the sea. Inching closer, colours fade to grey as we glide alongside pleated curtains of rock, their high edges streaked with ice and blurred by mist. For a moment, there seems nowhere to go, until a gap appears and our expedition ship, the Silver Wind, glides inside.

Known as Neptune’s Bellows, the rocky breach opens into Port Foster, a natural harbour folded inside the island.

Except this is another hoax. What looks like a calm bay is the flooded caldera of an active volcano, formed more than 10,000 years ago.

Approaching Whalers Bay by Zodiac we see steam rising from the black shoreline, but it’s on land that we encounter something more sinister: a graveyard of rusting boilers once used by the Norwegian Hektor Station to process whale blubber.

“It took 50 blue whales or 150 humpbacks to fill one vat,” says Rosie Simmonds, Silversea’s botanist and guide. My shoulders slump as I picture the reeking, broiling mess that unfolded here between 1912 and 1931.

Many of the abandoned buildings were later repurposed by the British military for research, until volcanic eruptions between 1967 and 1970 destroyed the bases for good. Miraculously, no lives were lost.

Rosie leads us past the whalers’ cemetery, where only a couple of crosses remain from the original 35 graves. “After the explosion they found coffins floating in the water,” she says.

Above the shoreline sits the remains of Biscoe House, the former whalers’ dormitory, its timber walls thick with lichen, the empty windows staring like hollow eyes.

Against the raw beauty of the Antarctic landscape, these human leftovers feel deeply out of place. In truth, I cannot wait to leave this cove of ghosts behind.

A second Zodiac excursion brings us to Telefon Bay on the north-west of the harbour.

From the beach, coal-black slopes climb into the sky, giving way to saw-toothed ridges, their flanks scored with zebra-stripped ice patterns. Beneath our feet, colours flicker between iron red to sulfurous yellow to ash.

Up the cinder cone we go, following the line of flags Silversea’s expedition team had marked out earlier. Instructions are clear: stay with your guide, keep away from the soft edges and don’t go near any seismic equipment.

My heart settles into a loud, rhythmic thump as the falling snow turns the landscape into a wash of swirling white. Catching our breath at the top we look into the crater bowl, its deep interior etched with braided rivers of melting snow.

In the lead-up to our shore visit we’d attended lectures about volcanism and the human history of the South Shetland Islands. Such a deep dive underscores Silversea’s commitment to education, its 28-member expedition team of marine biologists, ecologists, geologists and ornithologists on hand to help us make sense of it all.

Thanks to our lectures, I am now conversant in lapilli-tufts (rock made of compacted ash) and maar deposits (a landform created by magma-water interactions). The finer details of the island’s sub-glacial plumbing still has the science world scratching their heads.

Back on the beach, Rosie points out mosses that are now colonising the rocky earth. “Teeny tiny forests in one clump,” she says, with the glee of one talking about the Amazon jungle.

Later, we pause to watch a colony of fur seals sparring in the shallows, while gentoo penguins hop about in their shaggy, wind-ruffled coats.

For its final trick, Deception Island has beaten the odds and is once again teeming with life.

THE DETAILS

CRUISE
Suites on Silversea’s 12-day Antarctic cruise to and from Puerto Williams start from $23,350, a person. Prices include a pre-cruise hotel stay in Santiago, round-trip charter flights to Puerto Williams, and all-inclusive food, beverages and activities while on the ship. Longer itineraries are available. See silversea.com

STAY
From October 2026, Antarctica Fly Cruise guests will begin and end their journey at The Cormorant at 55 South, Silversea’s new 150-room hotel in Puerto Williams – the world’s southernmost hotel.

FLY
Qantas flies to Santiago from Sydney and Melbourne. See qantas.com

The writer was a guest of Silversea.