The Discovery of the South Shetland Islands: The Voyages of the Brig Williams 1819-1820, as Recorded in Contemporary Documents, and The Journal of Midshipman C. W. Poynter

2000

Journals G161 H2 Ser. 3 no. 4

London: The Hakluyt Society

In early 1819, on his way from Buenos Aires to Valparaiso in Chile, Captain William Smith (1790-1847), aboard the ship Williams, stumbled upon the South Shetland Islands at 62° south. When Smith informed the British Royal Navy in Chile, they did not believe him. Months later, he was able to convince the Royal Navy to investigate and they chartered Smith’s ship in November 1819. Led by Captain Edward Bransfield, the Royal Navy expedition claimed the South Shetland Islands for George III on 22nd January, 1820. Midshipman Charles Poynter’s account, discovered in the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington in the 1990s, is the only first-hand telling of the journey; the Hakluyt Society have published it for the first time in 2000.