Edward Bransfield (1785 – 1852) was a master in the Royal
Navy and arguably the discoverer of the continent of Antarctica.
Edward Bransfield was born
in Ballinacurra, County Cork, Ireland, in c.1785. Very little is known about
his early life; we do not even know what he looked like. In 1803, when he was
just eighteen years old, he was impressed into the Royal Navy—the principal
method of recruitment in those times.
He began as an ordinary
seaman on the 1st rate ship of the line (110 guns) Ville de Paris, and
was rated as an able seaman in 1805. He was appointed to the 1st rate ship of
the line (110 guns) Royal Sovereign (which had taken part in the battle
of Trafalgar in 1805) in 1806 as an Able Seaman, then 2nd Master's Mate in
1808, Midshipman in 1808, Clerk in 1809 and Midshipman again in 1811. By 1812
he had achieved the rank of 2nd master, and in the same year he was made acting
master on the Goldfinch (brig-sloop of the Cherokee class with 10 guns
and commanded by The Rt Hon Sir William Cornwallis).
Between the years 1814 and
1816 he served briefly, as Master (i.e. Navigator) on many 5th rate ships
(36/38 guns) and, on 21 February 1816, was appointed Master of the ship
"Severn" (4th rate ship with 50 guns) in which he took part in the
Bombardment of Algiers.
In September 1817, he was
appointed Master (i.e. navigator) of the Andromache under the
command of Captain W H Shirreff. It was during this tour of duty that he was
posted to the Royal Navy's new Pacific Squadron off Valparaíso in Chile.
Chile was fighting for her
independence from Spain, but Valparaíso had been neglected during the colonial
period and was a mean, uninviting place. Nevertheless, if it had not been for
this commission, Bransfield would never have been able to take his place in
history.
In 1773 James Cook sailed
beyond the Antarctic Circle—noting with pride in his journal that he was
"undoubtedly the first that ever crossed that line.". The following
year, he completely circumnavigated Antarctica and reached a latitude of 71°
10', before being driven back by the ice. It was the furthest south anyone had
ever gone.
Although he failed to catch
a glimpse of Antarctica, Cook dispelled once and for all the fanciful notion of
a fertile, populous continent surrounding the pole. Not surprisingly, the
British Admiralty lost interest in the Antarctic and turned its attention
instead to the ongoing search for the Northwest Passage. Almost half a century
passed before anyone else travelled as far south as Cook.
Then in 1819 while rounding
Cape Horn, William Smith, the skipper of an English merchant ship, the Williams,
was driven south by adverse winds and discovered what came to be known as the South
Shetland Islands. (The South Shetland Islands had previously been discovered by
the Spaniard Gabriel de Castilla in March 1603, and possibly four years before
that by the Dutchman Dirck Gerritsz.)
When news of his discovery
reached Valparaíso, Captain Shirreff decided that the matter warranted further
investigation. The Williams was chartered and Shirreff appointed
Bransfield, two midshipmen and the surgeon from the ship HMS Slaney, who
were dispatched to survey the newly discovered islands. Smith remained aboard,
acting as Bransfield's pilot.
After a brief and
uneventful voyage into the Southern Ocean, Bransfield and Smith reached the
South Shetland Islands. Bransfield landed on King George Island and took formal
possession on behalf of King George III (he died the day before on January 29, 1820),
before proceeding in a south-westerly direction past Deception Island not
investigating or charting it. Turning south, he crossed what is now known as
the Bransfield Strait (named for him by James Weddell in 1822), and on January
30, 1820 sighted Trinity Peninsula, the northernmost point of the Antarctic
mainland. "Such was the discovery of Antarctica," writes the English
writer Roland Huntford. Unknown to Bransfield, two days earlier, January 28, 1820,
the Russian explorer Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen logged the sighting of
an icy shoreline at a point that is now known to have been East Antarctica. Based
on this sighting, a claim has been made on behalf of Bellingshausen that he
should be credited with the discovery of the continent.
Bransfield made a note in
his log of two "high mountains, covered with snow", one of which was
subsequently named Mount Bransfield, by Dumont D'Urville, in his honour. Unlike
Bellingshausen, Bransfield discovered unambiguous geological formations that
could not be confused with pack ice.
Having charted a segment of
the Trinity Peninsula, Bransfield then followed the edge of the icesheet in a
north-easterly direction and discovered various points on Elephant Island and Clarence
Island, which he also formally claimed for the British Crown. He did not sail
around Elephant Island and did not name it (it is named for elephant seals),
although he fully charted Clarence Island.
When Bransfield finally
arrived back in Valparaíso he handed over his charts and journal to Captain
Shirreff who delivered them to the Admiralty. The original charts are still in
the possession of the Hydrographic department in Taunton, Somerset, but
Bransfield's journal has been lost. The Admiralty, it seems, was still more interested
in the search for the Northwest Passage. However, two private accounts of
Bransfield's historic voyage were published in 1821.
In recent years the journal
of one of the midshipmen, Charles Poynter, was discovered in New Zealand and an
account has been published by the Hakluyt Society, edited by Richard Campbell,
RN.
The remainder of Edward
Bransfield's life was passed in obscurity. He died in 1852 in his sixty-seventh
year and was buried in Brighton, England. His wife survived him and was buried
in the same grave in 1863. In 2000 the Royal Mail issued a commemorative stamp
in his honour, but as no likeness of the discoverer of Antarctica could be
found, the stamp depicted instead RRS Bransfield, an Antarctic surveying
vessel named after him. In 1999 Edward Bransfield's grave, discovered in a
sadly deteriorated state a in Brighton churchyard, was renovated (funded by
charitable donations) by Sheila Bransfield, who aspires to be Edward
Bransfield's official biographer. The event was marked by a ceremony attended
by numerous dignitaries.
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Edward_Bransfield&action=history