HISTORY OF ANTARTICA

For hundreds of years before the discovery of the continent of Antarctica, Greek scholars hypothesized of a great southern land mass that must exist to balance out the land masses of the north. They termed this hypothetical land 'Antarctica' or the opposite (from the latin root 'ant') of the Arctic.
Throughout the eighteenth century explorers and sailors began reporting groups of islands to the south of the tip of South America. The Drake Passage was a particularly dangerous body of water and ships were routinely blown off course. It was due to these mishaps that more and more islands would be discovered and the exploration of the last continent had begun.
The British Captain James Cook became the first person to cross the Antarctic Circle in 1773, but he circumnavigated Antarctica without once sighting land. Cook's observations on the huge seal and whale populations encouraged sealers and whalers to arrive in droves: nearly one third of the Southern Ocean and subantarctic islands were subsequently discovered by sealers.
It seems ironic that the severe weather that makes the southern ocean so dangerous, particularly in the south Atlantic, was a key factor in the discovery of Antarctica. Time and time again, sailors blown off course by a storm discovered new land.

First sighting of Antartica

These voyages were followed by a period when American and British sealers traveled south discovering subantarctic islands. From these islands they slaughtered fur seals for skins and giant elephant seals for oil. It was possibly a member of one of these sealing parties, Russian Admiral Von Bellinghausen, who made the first sighting of the Antarctic continent in January 1820. A British officer, Edward Bransfield, sighted the Antarctic Peninsula a month later, and Nathaniel Palmer, an American sealer, also claimed a sighting in November of that year.

First landing

Although the claim to fame for being the first to set foot on mainland Antarctica is still debated between the English, Americans and the Russians, the first recorded landing was in 1821 by American Capt. John Davis.

Whaling and seal hunting

The draw of Antarctica for most who ventured there was none other than man's insatiable greed. These untapped islands were home to millions of seals, and thousands of whales. Entire fleets would slaughter upwards of 20-25,000 seals in one outing; this was in the first year alone. This would continue well into the 20th century, after the seal and whale populations were decimated. The seal population has rebounded, but the whales are still struggling, with the blue whale population on the verge of extinction.

Bases established in Antartica

Carsten Egeberg Borchgrevink, a Norwegian funded by private British money, headed the first venture to establish firm bases on the continent. In 1899 this expedition left two simple huts, 10 men, 90 sledge dogs, kayaks for sea travel and a new Swedish invention - the Primus stove - in Antarctica. Despite one death, some near disasters and an ambivalent reaction on returning to London, this exercise was the start of modern Antarctic research.

HISTORY OF PATAGONIA

CapeHorn

Cape Horn, loved and hated by seamen over the last four hundred years, was named after Hoorn, a small town in the Netherlands, not far from Amsterdam, where Willem Corneliszoon Schouten was born. He was the captain of the ship "Unitie" in which, on January 29th of the year 1616, after a long crossing together with a school of whales and by many albatrosses, he discovered a high pointed promontory that he called Hoorn, later called Horn by the English. The fog that surrounded the ship deceived the whole crew: everyone thought it was the extreme southern tip of the continent and not an island as it really is.

Strait of Magellan

On 20 September 1519, Ferdinand Magellan and 277 men set sail from Spain with five ships, Trinidad, San Antonio, Concepcion, Victoria, and Santiago to find a southwestern route to the Moluccas (Spice Islands) through the New World. Finally, on 21 October 1520 Magallanes encountered the headlands of the Strait's eastern entrance. After 38 days probing tributary channels and bays, Magellan reached the Pacific Ocean and christened it Mar Pacifico because of its calm waters. This was Balboa's "Southern Sea," sighted seven years earlier from Panama. Magellan found the water route he had sought, but it came at a price: only three of his five ships remained. Some months later Magellan is killed in the Phillippines trying to convert the local tribes to Christianity. A fourth ship was lost.On 8 September 1522, the remaining ship, Victoria, captained by Juan Sebastián de Elcano, limped into port with 18 crewmembers and cast anchor in Sevilla. They had traveled over 14,500 leagues in almost exactly three years.The passage between oceans "round the Horn" is perhaps the most famous one a ship can make. The alternative, through the Straits of Magellan, does not guarantee safety. In Darwin's time, the Straits were still not well mapped, and attacks on ships by Fuegan natives were common. Beagle in fact did experience an attack (which led to brief exchange of arrows and musket-fire), a storm (but the ship was luckily sheltered at the time), and great anxiety in exploring uncharted parts of the Straits (which was part of her mission.) Once into the Pacific, Beagle encountered a succession of north gales - "Never has the Beagle has such ill luck!", Darwin wrote in his diary.

Beagle Channel

The Beagle Channel was named for the British ship Beagle, (in whose second expedition Charles Darwin explored the area (1833–34)). Its captain, Robert FitzRoy, had a b missionary urge and took some native Fueginos back to London. (See Darwin in Chile) The Beagle was a rather small, ten-gun brig of 242 tons, ninety feet in length. She was being completely refitted and rebuilt after her last expedition. On the upcoming trip she would be home to 74 people including the captain, three officers, the crew, a doctor, an artist, and of course the naturalist. Darwin shared the poop cabin (at the back of the ship) with two officers. Their space was so cramped that Darwin had to remove a drawer each night so that he would have room for his feet.Running east–west, the Beagle Channel is about 150 miles (240 km) long and 3 to 8 miles wide; it separates the archipelago's main island to the north from Navarino, Hoste, and other smaller islands to the south. At its western end the channel splits into two branches that encircle Isla Gordon. The eastern portion forms part of the Chile–Argentina border, while the western portion lies entirely within Chile. The three islands at the channel's eastern end, Picton, Nueva and Lennox islands, were the subject of a territorial dispute between Chile and Argentina that began in the 1840s and which almost led to war between the two nations in 1978. The dispute officially ended on May 2, 1985, when a treaty awarding the three islands to Chile went into effect between the two countries.