CHAPTER 4
The Unknown Southern Land
Explorers didn’t actually see the continent of Antarctica until 1820. But the ancient Greeks believed an unknown land existed somewhere to the south.
Aristotle
In the sixth century BC, Pythagoras (say: peh-THA-guh-rus), a Greek philosopher and mathematician, suggested that Earth was round. In the fourth century BC, another ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle (say: AHR-iss-tah-tuhl), took this idea even further. He said that if the earth was round, the weight of the land in the Northern Hemisphere must be balanced by land that lay to the south. Aristotle even gave this land to the south a name. The lands at the top of the planet were under a constellation called Arktos. So Aristotle called the land at the bottom of the planet Antarktos, which means “opposite of the north.”
Ptolemy (say: TOL-uh-mee), who lived in Alexandria in ancient Egypt, was important in the history of mapmaking. In the second century AD, he put this landmass to the south on a map he made. He called it the “unknown southern land.” But Ptolemy thought it was connected to the other continents. He also believed that people lived there and that it had fertile soil.
Centuries passed before anyone tried to prove that this unknown southern land actually existed. In the 1400s and 1500s, European explorers, such as Bartolomeu Dias, Vasco da Gama, and Amerigo Vespucci, began to sail south.
Ptolemy
These explorers were looking for routes to Asia either by sailing around South America or the tip of Africa. They recorded what they saw and shared the information with the rest of the world. But none of them got close enough to this landmass to the south to prove that it was really there.
In 1520, during a voyage around the whole planet, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan sailed around the tip of South America through a narrow passage of water, later named the Strait of Magellan. It connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The sailors spotted land to the south as they crossed the passage. It turned out to be just one of the islands that lie along the southern tip of South America. Many more explorers followed Magellan’s course and discovered many more islands in this area. Still, no one had spotted the unknown southern land.
The Strait of Magellan
Did that mean people stopped believing it existed?
Well, some started to doubt.
James Cook
In 1768, James Cook, a captain in the British navy, was sent to explore the southern Pacific Ocean. As with other explorers before him, the goal was to locate the mysterious landmass. However, Cook returned to England in 1771 without success. He said, “As to a Southern Continent, I do not believe any such thing exists, unless in a high latitude.”
Did that mean Cook gave up trying to find what he no longer fully believed in?
No. He was determined to figure out once and for all whether or not Terra Australis Incognita existed. (That means Unknown Land of the South.)
In 1773, Captain Cook set off again. There were two ships in the expedition, Resolution and Adventure. The crew had enough supplies for eighteen months and the most up-to-date chronometer, or timepiece. On this journey, Cook and his men sailed farther south than anyone else ever had. Captain Cook did manage to cross the Antarctic Circle for the first time.
Cook and his crew sailed through bad storms and thick fog on this journey. They came across huge icebergs as well. Cook believed that these icebergs must have broken off from some large landmass.
But as for reaching the fabled southern continent, no. Cook never got there. He and his men returned to England in 1775. He reported that even if there was land, the seas were so dangerous and the storms so terrible that no one could possibly live there.
What Cook never knew was that he came within about seventy miles of the coast of Antarctica. That’s pretty close. Still, it took almost another fifty years before an explorer finally laid eyes on the unknown southern land.
Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen
In 1819, Czar Alexander I of Russia chose Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen to lead an expedition. The czar (emperor) wanted to build more trading posts in that part of the world, so off Bellingshausen went on an extended voyage of discovery.
Bellingshausen was an experienced sailor. He had been a crew member on the first Russian expedition around the world from 1803 to 1806.
Now he set sail with two ships and nearly two hundred crew members.
Latitude and Longitude
On January 26, 1820, the ships crossed the Antarctic Circle. The next day, Bellingshausen and his crew probably made it to within twenty miles of the Antarctic Peninsula. Bellingshausen made a note in his journal that he saw “an icefield with small hillocks.” He was the first person who finally laid eyes on Antarctica. But Bellingshausen didn’t realize that. Rather than trying to get to the continent, he and his crew sailed on.
Just a year later, Captain John Davis and his crew sailed from Connecticut on a ship called the Huron. It was headed to the islands near the Antarctic Peninsula to hunt for seals. When the crew landed, they searched for seals for about an hour, but found none.
On February 7, 1821, the entry in the ship’s logbook read, “. . . open cloudy weather and light winds a standing for a large body of land in that direction . . . close in with our boat and sent her on shore . . . I think this southern land to be a continent.” Davis and his crew had been hunting for seals, not looking for the unknown southern land. Their discovery opened a new era in exploration.