1912 Read Free

area to see any land; he was desperately unlucky not to discover Antarctica.
    In 1777 he wrote: ‘I strongly believe that there does exist land close to the Pole, from which must proceed the greater part of the ice which we find spread across this vast southern ocean… It would have been folly on my part to risk all we had achieved on this voyage merely for the sake of discovering and exploring a coast which, once discovered and explored, would have proved useful neither to navigation, nor to geography, nor, in truth, to any other science.’ He went on: ‘Should anyone possess the resolution and fortitude to [push] yet further south…I make bold to declare that the world will derive no benefit from it.’
    In Cook’s view, even if Terra Australis Incognita was there, it was of little significance. But not everyone agreed.

    Cook’s report of abundant marine life in the freezing polar waters of the southern hemisphere whipped sealers and whalers into a frenzy. The world was hungry for fur and oil, and the North Atlantic could not keep up with demand. Soon fleets of vessels rushed south to mine what seemed an inexhaustible resource. In their enthusiasm to head south, the hunters often reached unexplored areas years before scientific expeditions. For most, this was a commercial exercise: many took the view that science had little, if any, role to play in their operations. The locations of rich pickings were jealously guarded; ships’ routes were left deliberately vague, for fear of giving away lucrative spots on an otherwise blank map. Fantastic stories, no doubt sometimes embellished to draw competitors away from richseal colonies, were retailed. Yet with the push south there came a series of discoveries that restored some faith in the idea of a southern continent.
    One of the first significant finds was made by a British captain, William Smith, who was exploring the seas around South America in his brig, the Williams , in February 1819. Blown off course by the region’s now-infamous strong winds, Smith found himself far south of Cape Horn and alongside a small cluster of ice-covered islands, which he called New South Shetland. He returned to the islands that October and, finding a landing place, took possession of the land for his monarch, King George III, before heading to Valparaíso, on the Chilean coast, where stories of what he had found soon circulated among sealers.
    The British captain tried to convince the Royal Navy officials in Chile of his discovery but they were suspicious of the claims. Nevertheless, Smith and his ship were put under the command of a young naval officer, Edward Bransfield, and sent back south. By January 1820 they reached the islands Smith had claimed and planted the British flag again, this time officially. At the end of the month they probed further south, and at 64°S spotted land. It was late in the summer and the weather was poor—‘the most gloomy that could be imagined,’ one of the men aboard reported, ‘and the only cheer the sight afforded was in the idea that this might be the long sought Southern Continent…The land [was named] Trinity Land in compliment to the Trinity Board.’
    Word of Smith and Bransfield’s find got out, and suddenly everyone seemed to be discovering parts of Terra Australia Incognita . Americans, Russians, British, Norwegians and Australians began tripping over one another to find new seal colonies in the icy southern Atlantic. A Russian explorer, Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen, recorded a sighting of land at 69°S, laying claim to being the first person to see the Antarctic continent. Then, a year after Smith returned fromTrinity Land, the American sealing captain Nathaniel Palmer reported having seen, independently, the same piece of ground as his British counterpart. Discoveries were a source of national pride as ever more finds were made in this new part of the world. And yet,