George Powell

George Powell (* 1794 in London , † 1824 on the Friendship Islands ) was a British seal hunter and discoverer of the South Orkney Islands in Antarctica .

Life

Powell was the son of a butcher . He went to sea at a young age and received his first command as captain of the Dove on August 19, 1818 at the age of 23 for the shipping company Daniel Bennett & Sons . The destination of his first voyage were the Kerguelen and South Georgia in search of new fishing grounds for whales and seals . He returned from this trip on July 19, 1819. On September 4th of the same year he set out on a voyage to South America as the captain of the Eliza . Between 1820 and 1821 he operated in the waters around the South Shetland Islands and returned to London with 18,000 seal pelts .

On June 30, 1821 he set out again with the Eliza and the Dove under the leadership of Captain John Wright to the South Shetland Islands. On November 8, he sighted Mount Foster on Smith Island from 130 km away and arrived there the following day. After crossing the Boyd Strait he reached New Plymouth Bay on the north coast of Livingston Island , where he met four other British sealers. In search of a suitable anchorage, Powell and Wright headed for Cape Shirreff , Spiller Cove , Blythe Bay on the southeast coast of Desolation Island and finally Clothier Harbor on the northwest side of Robert Island with their two ships . There Powell and Smith changed ships. While Wright stayed with the Eliza in Clothier Harbor, Powell headed for Elephant Island with the Dove , where the ship only narrowly escaped an accident . Believing that there were large seal populations there, Powell dismissed a crew to hunt the island and returned to Clothier Harbor. When he took the team back on, they had only killed 150 animals. On November 30, 1821, Powell came across the James Monroe of the American sealer captain Nathaniel Palmer . Powell and Palmer teamed up to explore the archipelago further. On December 4, they left a hunting party on Clarence Island and advanced further east. On December 6th, Powell was the first to sight the South Orkney Islands, four hours from Palmer . Powell landed at Spence Harbor on Coronation Island and took possession of it for the English crown. In the following years he mapped Laurie Island and Powell Island . Pack ice prevented an advance into more southerly waters. Powell and Palmer first headed for Elephant Island and finally arrived on December 22, 1821 in Clothier Harbor. Here their ways parted. Powell left Antarctic waters on February 22, 1822 and returned to England in August of that year. In the same year a map of the South Orkney Islands was created based on his notes.

In 1824 Powell was in command of the Rambler , a ship owned by Samuel Enderby & Sons . On April 3rd of the same year he arrived in the Friendship Islands (now Tonga ). Some crew members deserted there, including one of Powell's wards. Powell was killed while attempting to arrest the deserters.

George Powell is the namesake of several geographic objects. Specifically, these are the Powell Basin between the South Shetland and Orkney Islands, Powell Island in the archipelago of the South Orkney Islands and the Powell Rock off Signy Island .

literature

John Stewart: Antarctica - An Encyclopedia . Volume 1, McFarland & Co., Jefferson and London 2011, ISBN 978-0-7864-3590-6 , p. 1244.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Powell's map of South Orkney Island on the homepage of the National Maritime Museum (Royal Museum of Greenwich). Accessed May 1, 2017.