Edward Bransfield

Edward Bransfield (* 1785 in Ballinacurra , County Cork , † October 31, 1852 in Brighton ) was an Irish-British navigator and explorer and perhaps the first person to see the land masses of Antarctica .

Life

Early years

Bransfield was born in Ballinacurra in 1785 and very little is known about his youth. In 1803 he was dragged onto a ship of the Royal Navy by a press squad , a method common at the time to hire new sailors.

His seafaring career began as a simple seaman on the warship Ville de Paris , after which he quickly achieved higher seamanship ranks. From 1805 he served as a fully qualified seaman and from 1808 as a lieutenant at sea on the warship Royal Sovereign . In 1812 he reached the rank of 2nd officer and in the same year he became the commandant of the Goldfinch . A few years later he was the helmsman of the Andromache under the command of Captain William H. Shirreff (1785-1847). During this trip he was stationed by the Royal Navy at the Pacific station in Valparaíso in Chile . Chile had just gained its independence from Spain at this point , so Valparaíso was a very troubled city.

The discovery of the Antarctic

After the South Shetland Islands were discovered by accident by William Smith with the Williams in 1819 , Captain Shirreff Bransfield sent south to explore. For this purpose he chartered the Williams and William Smith remained on board as navigator.

At the end of December 1819, he sailed from Chile to the South Shetland Islands. After he took possession of King George Island for England , he explored the southern parts of the Antarctic Sea and came across Tower Island and Ohlin Island . On January 30, 1820, the expedition discovered Deception Island and later that day sighted a range of mountains running northeast to southwest, probably the Trinity Peninsula , the northernmost part of the Antarctic Peninsula . He noted in his logbook that he had discovered the long sought southern land mass and described two snow-capped mountains. One of these mountains was named Mount Bransfield in his honor . Bransfield followed the pack ice border and discovered Elephant Island and Clarence Island where he went ashore.

To this day it is debatable whether Bransfield and Smith discovered the Antarctic continent. This honor is probably due to Fabian von Bellingshausen , who had already sighted the Princess Martha coast in East Antarctica three days earlier from the corvette Vostok .

Bransfield gave his logbook and his private records as well as the maps to Shirreff, who forwarded them to Great Britain. The maps are still in the possession of the Hydrographic Department in London, but the logbook was lost. In 1821, parts of the records were published.

Next life

Bransfield left the Navy in 1820 and took command of various merchant ships in the years that followed. He lived in Brighton with his wife Ann and died in 1852.

Honors

In addition to Mount Bransfield, the strait between the South Shetland Islands and the Trinity Peninsula to Bransfield is also known as the Bransfield Strait . The Bransfield Island and the Bransfield Trough also bear his name .

In 2000 the UK Post wanted to issue a stamp with his portrait on it but was unable to find a picture of the man. Instead, a picture of RRS Bransfield now adorns the brand, a research vessel named after Bransfield.

literature

• John Stewart: Bransfield, Edward . In: Antarctica - An Encyclopedia . Vol. 1, McFarland & Co., Jefferson and London 2011, ISBN 978-0-7864-3590-6 , p. 202 (English)
• Ian R. Stone: Discovery of South Shetland Islands . In: Beau Riffenburgh (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the Antarctic , Routledge, New York and London 2007, pp. 926 f, ISBN 0-415-97024-5 (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ John Stewart: From Bellingshausen Expedition . In: Antarctica - An Encyclopedia . Vol. 2, McFarland & Co., Jefferson and London 2011, ISBN 978-0-7864-3590-6 , p. 1653 f (English)