James Weddell's expedition to Antarctica reaches latitude…

December 1823 CE

James Weddell's expedition to Antarctica reaches latitude 74°15' S and longitude 34°16'45" W: the southernmost position any ship has reached before, a record that will hold for more than eighty years.

Weddell had entered the merchant service very early in his life and was apparently bound to the master of a Newcastle collier (a coal transport vessel) for some years.

About 1805 he shipped on board a merchantman trading to the West Indies, making several voyages there.

He was aboard the Hope when in 1813 in the English Channel she captured the True Blooded Yankee, an American privateer.

With the end of the Napoleonic War he was laid off on half pay in February 1816, and for a while resumed merchant voyages to the West Indies.

In 1820 he volunteered for service in the Royal Navy and subsequently served on several ships.
Voyages to the Antarctic

In 1819 Weddell had been introduced to James Strachan, a shipbuilder of Leith, who together with James Mitchell, a London insurance broker, owned the 160-ton brig Jane, an American-built ship taken during the War of 1812 and re-fitted for sealing.

News of the discovery of the South Shetland Islands had just broken, and Weddell had suggested that fortunes might be made in the new sealing grounds.

His first voyage as the captain of the Jane took him to the Falkland Islands and further south.

He returned with the holds full, and the voyage was so profitable, that Strachan and Mitchell had a second ship built: the Beaufoy.

The next voyage from 1821 and 1822 had taken both ships to the South Shetland Islands.

However, there were some forty five sealers operating in the area, and seal were already becoming rare (a mere two years after the discovery of the islands), so he scouted for new hunting grounds.

Michael McCleod, the captain of the Beaufoy, had sighted the South Orkney Islands on November 22, 1821, an independent discovery from that of Powell and Palmer just a few days earlier.

There, they hunted for seals, and arrived back in England in July.

On the third voyage from 1822 to 1824, Weddell again commands the Jane, while the captain of the Beaufoy is one Matthew Brisbane.

Together they sail to the South Orkneys again.

Sealing proves disappointing, though, and after searching for land between the South Shetlands and the South Orkneys (and not finding any), they turn south in the hope to better sealing ground there.

The season is unusually mild and tranquil, and on February 20, 1823, the two ships have reached latitude 74°15′S and longitude 34°16′45″W (−74.25, −34.279): the southernmost position any ship has ever reached up to this time.

A few icebergs are sighted, but there is still no sight of land, leading Weddell to theorize that the sea continues as far as the South Pole

Another two days' sailing would have brought him to Coats Land (to the east of the Weddell Sea), but Weddell decides to turn back.

After deciding to go back, Weddell cheers the crew with the announcement of being southward of any former navigator and a little ceremony; the colors are hoisted, a gun is fired, both crews give three cheers, and an allowance of grog dispels the gloom.

The area is named The Sea of George the Fourth, but the naming does not become permanent.

The region will not be visited again until 1911, when Wilhelm Filchner discovers the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf.