Antarctica, explored

CAPTAIN JAMES COOK is credited with many discoveries, but Antarctica is not among them. Although Cook, on his 1772–75 voyage, was the first navigator inside the Antarctic Circle and to circumnavigate Terra Australis Incognita, the mythical and unconfirmed great southern land, he never laid eyes on the icy continent.

Cook’s published journal of 1777 predicted Antarctica’s existence based on the extensive sea ice he’d encountered. But he concluded that future explorers would likely never venture further south than he had. “Thick fogs, snow storms, intense cold and every other thing that can render navigation dangerous must be encountered; and these difficulties are greatly heightened by the inexpressibly horrid aspect of the country,” he wrote. For years, the matter of the frozen southern land was closed.

By 1819 discovery of the southern continent was again deemed necessary. Russian Captain Fabian Gottlieb Thaddeus von Bellingshausen, a great admirer of Cook, was deployed by his emperor, Alexander I, on a mission to proceed as far south as possible. Armed with a copy of Cook’s records, Bellingshausen helmed an expedition comprising two ships, the 40m-long and the smaller The two ships proceeded south and crossed the Antarctic Circle on 26 January 1820, the first expedition to do so since Cook’s 47 years earlier. On 27 January,