The Story of the Island of Ice.
Bouvet Island is in itself not anything spectacular; it’s a sub-Antarctic island, mostly covered in ice and glacierfication.
However, the early years of the 18th Century, explorers from the Zulu nation discovered an ancient city on the northern part of the island, the city was dug into the bedrock of the island, thus protecting it from the ice and the oceans ferocity.
The brave Zulu explorers where unable to approach the city itself due a hurricane, a common thing at these latitudes, and where forced to simply make sketches and mark the position of the island on their maps, before they had to turn their ship around and head back towards the Zulu homelands.
Due to the presence of a Dutch spy in the Zulu harbour of Cape Town, who notably was reconquered by the Zulu from the English in 1632, the maps and sketches where stolen from the Zulu Exploration Navy and later sold to several European, African and Asian nations, all of them where most interested in the apparently lost city in the distant south, some from a purely economical perspective, such a city might just contain treasures, others from archeologically or prestige perspectives.
None of them want anyone else to get their hands on the island, or the secrets hidden deep within its bedrock.
And as an unknown Zulu officer put it well all those many years ago: “Magnificent godforsaken little shitty island, so far to the South, not even the Dark Gods care.â€
Nonetheless, many of the great nations of the world send off each their separate expeditions and fleets with the sole purpose of aquiring the city’s secrets, and as Lord Anderson said so well: “It doesn’t matter what’s in the damn city, it could be empty, just the fact that we have control of it would be prestigious enough, anything else is simply a bonus.â€
So off the set, only eight of the great expeditions actually made their way to Bouvet Island, the rest either failed, suffred to many casualties to carry on or was simply lost underway.
The eight Fleets who made it belonged to the following nations and a single organization:
The English Expeditionary Fleet.
The Zulu Exploratory Fleet.
The Dutch Mercantile Navy.
The Compact Special Expedition.
The Imperial Nipponese Envoys.
The League of Free Merchants and Traders.
The Roman Imperial Marine.
And finally, the Spanish Royal Fleet.
The Scene was now set, the island was in sight, and so where the eight great navies.
We shall continue tomorrow, with the Battle for Bouvet Island, and the results and consequences.
Thank you.