Edward Bransfield
Bransfield, Edward
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Edward Bransfield (1785-1852) was a British naval officer who contributed to the exploration of the Antarctic and was one of the first people to sight the mainland of Antarctica.
Little is known about his early life. He was forced or "impressed" into the British navy in 1803. However, Bransfield appears to have taken to the navy and rose steadily through the ranks to become a Master or navigator of various ships.
Source: Eduardo Olazabal Salgado In March 1819, Bransfield was stationed in Vaparaiso on the Pacific coast of South America when merchant Captain William Smith sailed into port. Smith reported his sighting of unknown islands five hundred miles to the south of Cape Horn to Bransfield's commanding officer William Henry Shirreff. Those islands are now known as the South Shetland Islands.
Although Smith's report was initially dismissed by Shirreff, when Smith returned to Valpariaso in November 1819, reporting a second visit to the South Shetland Islands with soundings of sea depth and a rough charting of several islands, Shirreff acted promptly to commission Smith's ship, the Williams, to conduct a voyage of exploration to the islands. Shirreff chose Bransfield to command the voyage and added the additional naval officers as a surgeon to the ship. Shirreff also reported up the chain of command to the British Government news of Smith's discovery of the South Shetland Islands.
In January, 1820, the Williams arrived back at the South Shetlands and began to chart them from the north side and then from the south side before reaching Deception Island. There were several landings and claiming of the islands for the British crown.
The Williams was not alone in the South Shetlands. News of Smith's discovery had already reached sealers and boats, British and American, began to arrive to hunt at the same time Bransfield was charting the islands. With a few important exceptions, little is know about what seal hunting ships discovered, because they were very competitive and therefore secretive about were they found seals.
South Shetland Islands off the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula From Deception Island, the Williams sailed south across a stretch of water now known as the Bransfield Strait and on January 30, 1820, Smith and Bransfield again sighted land. Ahead lay an island (Tower Island) and beyond it more land with high peaks, which they named Trinity Land (now know as Trinity Peninsula , which is the northern most part of the Antarctic Peninsula and the Antarctic continent. Unknown to them, a Russian explorer, Thaddeus von Bellinghausen had probably sighted the Antarctic continent for the first time just three days earlier about 1,400 miles east of the Antarctic Peninsula.
For the next few days, the Williams sailed north and east paralleling the coast of the Trinity Peninsula without seeing much through the ice and fog before discovering Elephant Island and Clarence Island. After sailing further east and discovering nothing, the Williams returned to Valparaiso.
Bransfield's log and chart were forwarded to the Admiralty (though the log was subsequently lost) and reports began to appear in the British press. The first-hand account of the journey was produced by Charles Poynter one of the Midshipmen serving under Bransfield. entitled The Discovery of the South Shetland Islands, 1819-1820.
Further Reading
- Antarctica Observed, A.G.E. Jones, Caedmon of Whitby, 1982 ISBN: 0905355253.
- The Discovery of the South Shetland Islands, 1819-1820: The Journal of Midshipman C. W. Poynter, R. J. Campbell (editor), Hakluyt Society, 2001
- Below the Convergence: Voyages Towards Antarctica, 1699-1839, Alan Gurney, W.W. Norton and Company, 1997 ISBN: 0393039498.
- Exploring Polar Frontiers: An Historical Encyclopedia, William James Mills, ABC-CLIO, 2003 ISBN: 1576074226.
- Antarctica: Exploring the Extreme: 400 Years of Adventureby Marilyn J. Landis, Chicago Review Press, 2001 ISBN: 1556524285.
