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Rh safely be said that all the navigators who fell in with the southern ice up to 1750 did so by being driven off their course and not of set purpose An exception may perhaps be made in favour of Halley’s voyage in H.M.S. “Paramour” for magnetic investigations in the South Atlantic when he met the ice in 52° S. in January 1700; but that latitude was his farthest south. A determined effort on the part of the French naval officer Pierre Bouvet to discover the South Land described by a half legendary sieur de Gonneville resulted only in the discovery of Bouvet Island in 54° 10′ S., and in the navigation of 48 degrees of longitude of ice-cumbered sea nearly in 55° S. in 1739. In 1771 Yves Joseph Kerguelen sailed from France with instructions to proceed south from Mauritius in search of “a very large continent” He lighted upon a land in 50° S. which he called South France, and believed to be the central mass of the southern continent. He was sent out again to complete the exploration of the new land, and found it to be only an inhospitable island which he renamed in disgust the Isle of Desolation, but in which posterity has recognized his courageous efforts by naming it Kerguelen Land The obsession of the undiscovered continent culminated in the brain of Alexander Dalrymple, the brilliant and erratic hydrographer who was nominated by the Royal Society to command the Transit of Venus expedition to Tahiti in 1769, a post he coveted less for its astronomical interest than for the opportunity it would afford him of confirming the truthfulness of his favourite explorer Quiros The command of the expedition was given by the admiralty to Captain James Cook, whose geographical results were criticized by Dalrymple with a force and persistence which probably had some weight in deciding the admiralty to send Cook out again with explicit instructions to solve the problem of the southern continent.

Sailing in 1772 with the “Resolution,” a vessel of 462 tons under his own command and the “Adventure” of 336 tons under Captain Tobias Furneaux, Cook first searched in vain for Bouvet Island, then sailed for 20 degrees of longitude to the westward in latitude 58° S., and then 30° eastward for the most part south of 60° S. a higher southern latitude than had ever been voluntarily entered before by any vessel On the 17th of January 1773 the Antarctic Circle was crossed for the first time in history and the two ships reached 67° 15′ S. in 39° 35′ E., where their course was stopped by ice. There Cook turned northward to look for South France, of the discovery of which he had received news at Cape Town, but from the rough determination of his longitude by Kerguelen, Cook reached the assigned latitude 10° too far east and did not see it He turned south again and was stopped by ice in 61° 52′ S. and 95° E. and continued eastward nearly on the parallel of 60° S. to 147° E. where on March 16th the approaching winter drove him northward for rest to New Zealand and the tropical islands of the Pacific. In November 1773 Cook left New Zealand, having parted company with the “Adventure,” and reached 60° S. in 177° W., whence he sailed eastward keeping as far south as the floating ice allowed The Antarctic Circle was crossed on the 20th of December and Cook remained south of it for three days, being compelled after reaching 67° 31′ S. to stand north again in 135° W. A long detour to 47° 50′ S. served to show that there was no land connexion between New Zealand and Tierra del Fuego, and turning south again Cook crossed the Antarctic circle for the third time in 109° 30′ W., and four days later his progress was blocked by ice in 71° 10′ S., 106° 54′ W. This point, reached on the 30th of January 1774, was the farthest south attained in the 18th century. With a great detour to the east, almost to the coast of South America, the expedition regained Tahiti for refreshment. In November 1774 Cook started from New Zealand and crossed the South Pacific without sighting land between 53° and 57° S. to Tierra del Fuego, then passing Cape Horn on the 29th of December he discovered the Isle of Georgia and Sandwich Land, the only ice-clad land he had seen, and crossed the South Atlantic to the Cape of Good Hope between 55° and 60° S., thereby wiping out Dalrymple’s continent from all the oceans and laying open the way for future Antarctic exploration by exploding the myth of a habitable southern continent. Cook’s most southerly discovery of land lay on the temperate side of the 60th parallel, and he convinced himself that if land lay farther south it was practically inaccessible and of no economic value.

Soon after Cook’s return sealers set out on voyages to South Georgia both from England and America, but no clear accounts of the southern limits of their voyages before the Sealers year 1819 can now be obtained. In February of that year William Smith of the brig “Williams” trading between Monte Video and Valparaiso, rounding the Horn with a wide sweep to the south, saw land in 62° 40′ S. Repeating the voyage in October he saw the land distinctly, and named it New South Shetland. The “Williams” was chartered by the British naval commander on the Pacific station, and in 1820 Edward Bransfield, master R.N., surveyed the group and went as far as 64° 30′ among the islands. Meanwhile American sealers from Stonington, Connecticut, had begun operations on the newly discovered land, and one of these, Nathaniel B. Palmer, discovered the mountainous archipelago still farther south which now bears his name. In 1821–1822 George Powell, apparently a British sealer, discovered and surveyed the South Orkney Islands which, though typical Antarctic lands, lie outside the Antarctic region.

A voyage only second in importance to that of Cook was planned in Russia and sent out by the emperor Alexander I. under the conimand of Fabian von Bellingshausen in the “Vostok,” with Lieut. Lazareff in the “Mirni” company, both vessels being about 500 tons. The object of the expedition was to supplement that of Cook by circumnavigating the Antarctic area, taking care to keep as far south as possible in those longitudes where Cook had made his northward detours Bellingshausen entered on his exploring work by sighting South Georgia at the end of December 1819, discovered the Traverse Islands, sighted the Sandwich group and met a solid ice-pack in 60° S., to get round which he made a wide detour, sailing east to the south of Cook’s track, and getting south of the 60th parallel in 8° W. On the 26th of January he crossed the Antarctic Circle in 3° W. and by February 1st had reached 69° 25′ in 1° 11′ W., a latitude which has never been surpassed on that meridian. Being stopped by ice, Bellingshausen turned northward and then continued to the east well to the south of Cook’s track, getting south again as the ice permitted and reaching 69° 6′ S. in 18° E. On this occasion he was able to sail for three degrees of longitude within the circle before being forced north of it by a succession of heavy gales He still kept eastward south of 65° S. and crossed the circle once more in 41° E., where the number of birds seen suggested the proximity of land, and in fact Enderby Land was not very far off, though out of sight. A storm of unexampled violence drove the ships northward, but they still held to the east south of 60° S. as far as 87° E., having followed the edge of the ice through those meridians south of Kerguelen Land where Cook had made a great detour to the north. Bellingshausen now made for Sydney to rest and refit, arriving there on the 29th of March 1820, after 131 days under sail from his last port. At Sydney Bellingshausen heard of the discovery of the South Shetlands, and leaving early in November reached the sixtieth parallel a month later in longitude 143° W., and sailing eastward kept south of that parallel through 145 degrees of longitude during sixty-five days, never out of sight of the ice, keeping close along the pack edge through the great gap left by Cook south of New Zealand He managed to cross the circle three times more, in 164° 30′ W., in 120° W. and in 92° 10′ W, where he reached 69° 52′ S., the culminating point of the voyage. As the cruise was supplementary to Cook’s, no attempt was made to get south of the meridian where that great navigator made his highest latitude On the 22nd of January 1821, the day after reaching his highest latitude, Bellingshausen sighted the first land ever seen within the Antarctic Circle, the little island named after Peter I. A week later another and larger land, named after Alexander I., was seen at a distance of 40 m. and sketches made of its bold outline in which the black rock stood out in contrast to the snow.