Introduction
On 20 May 2008 the Antarctic place names committee of the United Kingdom (UKAPC) approved the name Una Peaks for ‘[t]win ice and snow-capped peaks on Renard Island, south of Cape Renard, at the entrance to Lemaire Channel. Named after Una Spivey, a member of staff in the Governor's Office in Stanley, Falkland Islands in the 1950's. Known colloquially as Una's Tits since circa 1955, also as Cape Renard Towers' (Fig. 1; SCAR 2008). Renard Island was also approved as a new name at the time.
Photograph of Una Peaks by the author, December 1987.
Geographical setting
The location of Una Peaks is perhaps best known by those who approach Lemaire Channel on tour vessels for its striking topography prior to entering the channel from the north. The colloquial term for the feature apparently started with the field members of the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (FIDS, now British Antarctic Survey), an all-male field organisation conducting mapping and other work in the British-claimed Antarctic Peninsula beginning in the 1940s. However, Una, herself, had heard from a Royal Navy officer that the name ‘Una's Tits’ was first used in 1956 as a temporary name on a draft chart drawn by a naval survey party. That was probably Lt. C.J.C. Wynne-Edwards' hydrographic party, an independent naval survey unit transported by HMS Protector, which, working with a small boat from Port Lockroy between November 1956 and February 1957, had charted Bismarck Strait (Headland in press).
The connection between the field workers for FIDS and home was Stanley, where the then Una Sedgwick represented a pleasant and feminine presence for those heading south, as well as those returning after a 2 year assignment (Fig. 2). Una's charms presumably led to the colloquial term, which will probably never cease to exist, even though the new name is now official, with stated coordinates of 65°01′28″S, 63°46′36″W.
Una Sedgwick, 1949.
As a result of close connections between the Stanley office and the field workers, it was perhaps inevitable that Una married one of the expedition members, Major Robert Spivey (formerly 21st Independent Parachute Company), who spent two years at the British base on Stonington Island, Marguerite Bay, in 1948–1950.
Una in Stanley and in marriage
Una served as secretary to the Governor of the Falkland Islands in Stanley between 1949–1951. On appointment she was approximately 18 and had returned from three years at boarding school in England. Her father was Lawrence Sedgwick, a Falkland Islander who co-owned the general store in Stanley called ‘McAtasney and Sedgwick’. She met Robert Spivey when he returned from Antarctica in about March 1950, when he brought back a team of huskies destined for the Festival of Britain. He proposed to Una at that time, but was refused. However, they became friends and kept in touch for 10 years from various parts of the world until they eventually married in February 1960. Prior to that, ‘Spiv’, as he was known, was dropmaster at Thule, Greenland, in 1954, magistrate on South Georgia, 1954–1957, and then, joined the Colonial Service. Una and he lived in the Solomon Islands and the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) before finally settling in Australia, where Robert died in 1994. As a result of his work with FIDS, a geographic feature, Mount Spivey on Alexander Island, was named after him.
It is fitting after so many years that someone who became known in a friendly way to those who toiled in the field for FIDS should receive proper recognition, and this has now been achieved as Una Peaks.
Acknowledgements
Chiara Ramorino, Consorzio of the Programma Nazionale di Ricerche in Antartide in Rome, was very helpful in providing website information. Dr. Bernard Stonehouse, formerly with FIDS, spent two years with Bob Spivey at Stonington Island, and, by contact with Una Spivey in 2008 provided details about her and her history with the Governor's office in Stanley, and with FIDS and in later years. Final details and verification of the narrative contents of this note were secured by the author in direct communication with Una Spivey.
