Hopes for replica ship visit 200 years on from Bransfield’s Antarctica sighting

The organisers of a special commemoration for an Irishman acknowledged as being the first person to record a sighting of Antarctica are hoping that a replica of the ship he was on at the time will visit his native Co Cork.

Edward Bransfield, who was born in Ballinacurra, near Midleton, was on-board the merchant ship The Williams when in January 1820 he spotted the icy continent.

The captain of that ship, William Smith, was born in Blyth, in north-east England and a group from that area has built a replica of it, known as The Williams II.

They intend to sail her to Antarctica next year to mark the 200th anniversary of the discovery.

The Edward Bransfield Committee, which was set up in East Cork to commemorate the man and is building a monument to his memory, has contacted the English group asking that they bring the ship to Cork on their historic re-enactment.

“We are hopeful that they will be able to visit Cork harbour on their way south,” a spokesman for the Edward Bransfield Committee said.

It’s believed Bransfield was born around 1785 and in his late teens was forcibly taken from his father’s fishing vessel off the Cork coast by British sailors and press-ganged into the Royal Navy.

He began life as an ordinary seaman, but quickly moved up the ranks and was involved in a number of actions during the Napoleonic Wars.

During 1819 while rounding Cape Horn, The Williams, was driven south by adverse winds and discovered what came to be known as the South Shetland Islands.

When news of this discovery reached Valparaíso, Captain Shirreff of the Royal Navy decided that the matter warranted further investigation.

The Royal Navy chartered The Williams and ordered Bransfield to chart the territory further south.

Bransfield landed on King George Island and took formal possession of the land on behalf of King George III, who had died the day before on January 29, 1820.

He proceeded in a south-westerly direction past Deception Island, not investigating or charting it.

Turning south, the ship crossed what is now known as the Bransfield Strait, named for him by James Weddell in 1822.

On January 30, 1820 the ship sighted Trinity Peninsula, the northernmost point of the Antarctic mainland.

Bransfield made a note in his log of two “high mountains, covered with snow”, one of which was subsequently named Mount Bransfield in his honour.

He died in Brighton, England October 31, 1852 and is buried in that town.