Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
5
arctica. The significance of this discovery, however, was not widely recognized outside
of Russia until the twentieth century, when Bellingshausen's report was translated into
German (1902) and then English (1945).
During the 1820-1821 season, Bellingshausen sailed east from Sydney, Australia, and
discovered “Alexander I Land,” now known to be an island (Alexander Island), connected
to the foot of the Antarctic Peninsula by fast sea ice. From there he sailed north to the
South Shetland Islands, where he encountered American and British sealing ships that
had rushed to the islands after their discovery in 1819 by William Smith. Chasing favor-
able winds, Smith, captain of a cargo ship rounding Cape Horn, had sailed farther south
than anyone before and happened onto this rich breeding ground of pinnipeds.
The year after Smith's discovery, the British Admiralty sent a surveying expedition
commanded by Edward Bransfield with Smith as guide. On January 30, 1820, they had
charted the rocky peaks of part of the northern end of the Antarctic Peninsula (Trinity
Peninsula). The coincidence in time and the sighting of ice versus rock have led to long-
standing arguments whether Bellingshausen or Bransfield was the first to sight the conti-
nent of Antarctica.
Although the early sealers and whalers who probed first the Antarctic Peninsula and
later more distant coasts sailed foremost for commercial enterprise, many of the captains
also had a keen interest in natural history and in the discovery of land for its own sake.
The British whaling and sealing firm of the Enderby Brothers particularly encouraged
this sort of activity. One of their captains was James Weddell, who sailed south in search
of seals to the east of the Antarctic Peninsula, penetrating deep into the sea that would
come to bear his name. On February 20, 1823, he reached 74° 15′ S and turned and headed
north, claiming the record of “farthest south” that would stand until 1841, when Ross
bested it. Although Weddell sighted no land, he had mapped ocean to a considerably
higher latitude than the coastline spotted by Bellingshausen.
John Biscoe, another Enderby Brothers captain, sailed close along the ice-bound
coast of East Antarctica previously sighted by Bellingshausen, and on February 28, 1831,
discovered a coastline with rock jutting through the ice at 66° S, 51° E, which he named
Enderby Land.
In the late 1830s France, the United States, and Great Britain mounted national ex-
peditions, each charged to explore high southern latitudes. The French voyage, captained
by Jules Sébastien César Dumont d'Urville, sailed south from Hobart in the summer of
1839-1840 and sighted land at 142° E, 67° S on January 19, 1840. A party landed on an is-
let, collected granite and several startled penguins, claimed the new land for France, and
toasted with a bottle of Bordeaux. The expedition then sailed west as far as 134° E before
returning to Hobart. Dumont d'Urville named this new territory Adélie Land after his
wife, and subsequently the penguins that the expedition collected were named Adélies.
The United States Exploring Expedition of 1838-1842 commanded by Charles Wilkes
was a complicated voyage involving a fleet of six ships that separated and came back to-
gether, visited all seven continents, and encircled the globe. One ship returned ill-suited
for the high seas; another went down in a storm. Wilkes had been ordered to sail south
from Hobart in the summer of 1839-1840 until he encountered coastline and then to
explore westward as far as 45° E. Three of the ships reported sighting land on January
