John Balleny
John Balleny (* 1770 in Northumberland ; † October 2, 1842 at sea off Cuttack , India ) was the English captain of the whaler Eliza Scott , who made an expedition to Antarctica in 1838/39 for the English whaling company Enderby Brothers .
On this expedition, Balleny sailed together with Thomas Freeman († 1839) and the Sabrina in the southern ocean . The men registered a partial breakup of the pack ice that surrounds the continent, discovered the Balleny Islands in February 1839 and came briefly in sight of the Antarctic mainland at 64 ° 58 ′ S, 121 ° 08 ′ E. This area is now called the Sabrina Coast . The Sabrina and her crew were lost in a storm on March 24, 1839.
The route that Balleny took through the southern ocean was later used by other researchers such as Robert Scott , Ernest Shackleton , Roald Amundsen or Richard Byrd and is still used today by research vessels that use McMurdo Station and other scientific bases in and around supply the Ross Sea .
Balleny died when the Bark Acasta sank in a storm on October 2, 1842 off the coast of the northeast Indian city of Cuttack . In the Antarctic, Balleny is the namesake for the Balleny Islands and indirectly also for the Balleny Basin , the Balleny Fracture Zone , the Balleny Seamounts and the Balleny Trough .
Web links
- Summary of Balleny's role ( Memento from May 31, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
Individual evidence
- ^ John Stewart: Antarctica - An Encyclopedia . Vol. 2, McFarland & Co., Jefferson and London 2011, ISBN 978-0-7864-3590-6 , p. 1345 (English).
- ^ John Stewart: Antarctica - An Encyclopedia . Vol. 1, McFarland & Co., Jefferson and London 2011, ISBN 978-0-7864-3590-6 , p. 112 (English).
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Balleny, John |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | English navigator and polar explorer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1770 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Northumberland |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 2, 1842 |
| Place of death | at sea off Cuttack , India |