Background

In 1830, the English whaling

Whaling

Whaling is the hunting of whales mainly for meat and oil. Its earliest forms date to at least 3000 BC. Various coastal communities have long histories of sustenance whaling and harvesting beached whales...

 company Samuel Enderby & Sons

Samuel Enderby & Sons

Samuel Enderby & Sons was a whaling and sealing company based in London, England, founded circa 1775 by Samuel Enderby . The company encouraged their captains to combine exploration with their business activities, and sponsored several of the earliest expeditions to the subantarctic, Southern Ocean...

 appointed John Biscoe

John Biscoe

John Biscoe was an English mariner and explorer who commanded the first expedition known to have sighted the areas named Enderby Land and Graham Land along the coast of Antarctica...

 master

Master mariner

A Master Mariner or MM is the professional qualification required for someone to serve as the person in charge or person in command of a commercial vessel. In England, the term Master Mariner has been in use at least since the 13th century, reflecting the fact that in guild or livery company terms,...

 of the brig

Brig

A brig is a sailing vessel with two square-rigged masts. During the Age of Sail, brigs were seen as fast and manoeuvrable and were used as both naval warships and merchant vessels. They were especially popular in the 18th and early 19th centuries...

 Tula and leader of an expedition to find new seal-hunting grounds in the Southern Ocean

Southern Ocean

The Southern Ocean comprises the southernmost waters of the World Ocean, generally taken to be south of 60°S latitude and encircling Antarctica. It is usually regarded as the fourth-largest of the five principal oceanic divisions...

. Accompanied by the cutter Lively, the Tula left London and by December had reached the South Shetland Islands

South Shetland Islands

The South Shetland Islands are a group of Antarctic islands, lying about north of the Antarctic Peninsula, with a total area of . By the Antarctic Treaty of 1959, the Islands' sovereignty is neither recognized nor disputed by the signatories and they are free for use by any signatory for...

. The expedition then sailed further south, crossing the Antarctic Circle

Antarctic Circle

The Antarctic Circle is one of the five major circles of latitude that mark maps of the Earth. For 2011, it is the parallel of latitude that runs south of the Equator.-Description:...

 on January 22, 1831, before turning east at 60°S

Latitude

In geography, the latitude of a location on the Earth is the angular distance of that location south or north of the Equator. The latitude is an angle, and is usually measured in degrees . The equator has a latitude of 0°, the North pole has a latitude of 90° north , and the South pole has a...

.

Just over a month later, on February 24, 1831, the expedition sighted bare mountain tops through the ocean ice. Biscoe correctly surmised that they were part of a continent and named the area Enderby Land

Enderby Land

Enderby Land is a projecting land mass of Antarctica, extending from Shinnan Glacier at to William Scoresby Bay at .Enderby Land was discovered in February 1831 by John Biscoe in the whaling brig Tula, and named after the Enderby Brothers of London, owners of the Tula, who encouraged their...

 in honour of his patrons. On February 28, a headland

Headlands and bays

Headlands and bays are two related features of the coastal environment.- Geology and geography :Headlands and bays are often found on the same coastline. A bay is surrounded by land on three sides, whereas a headland is surrounded by water on three sides. Headlands are characterized by high,...

 was spotted, which Biscoe named Cape Ann

Cape Ann and Mount Biscoe

Cape Ann is a cape on the coast of East Antarctica, surmounted by Mount Biscoe rising to a peak of 700 metres.It was first photographed from the air in December 1929 during a Norwegian expedition led by explorer and aviator Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen...

; the mountain atop the headland would later be named Mount Biscoe

Cape Ann and Mount Biscoe

Cape Ann is a cape on the coast of East Antarctica, surmounted by Mount Biscoe rising to a peak of 700 metres.It was first photographed from the air in December 1929 during a Norwegian expedition led by explorer and aviator Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen...

. Biscoe kept the expedition in the area while he began to chart the coastline, but after a month his and his crews' health were deteriorating. The expedition set sail toward Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, reaching Hobart

Hobart

Hobart is the state capital and most populous city of the Australian island state of Tasmania. Founded in 1804 as a penal colony,Hobart is Australia's second oldest capital city after Sydney. In 2009, the city had a greater area population of approximately 212,019. A resident of Hobart is known as...

, Tasmania

Tasmania

Tasmania is an Australian island and state. It is south of the continent, separated by Bass Strait. The state includes the island of Tasmania—the 26th largest island in the world—and the surrounding islands. The state has a population of 507,626 , of whom almost half reside in the greater Hobart...

 in May, but not before two crew members had died from scurvy

Scurvy

Scurvy is a disease resulting from a deficiency of vitamin C, which is required for the synthesis of collagen in humans. The chemical name for vitamin C, ascorbic acid, is derived from the Latin name of scurvy, scorbutus, which also provides the adjective scorbutic...

.

The expedition wintered in Hobart before heading back toward the Antarctic. On February 15, 1832, Adelaide Island

Adelaide Island

Adelaide Island or Isla Adelaida or Isla Belgrano is a large, mainly ice-covered island, long and wide, lying at the north side of Marguerite Bay off the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. The island lies within the Argentine, British and Chilean Antarctic claims, at .Adelaide Island was...

 was discovered and two days later the Biscoe Islands

Biscoe Islands

Biscoe Islands is a series of islands, of which the principal ones are Renaud, Rabot, Lavoisier and Watkins, lying parallel to the W coast of Graham Land and extending some in a NE–SW direction...

. A further four days later, on February 21, more extensive coastline was spotted. Surmising again that he had encountered a continent, Biscoe named the area Graham Land

Graham Land

Graham Land is that portion of the Antarctic Peninsula which lies north of a line joining Cape Jeremy and Cape Agassiz. This description of Graham Land is consistent with the 1964 agreement between the British Antarctic Place-names Committee and the US Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names, in...

, after First Lord of the Admiralty

Admiralty

The Admiralty was formerly the authority in the Kingdom of England, and later in the United Kingdom, responsible for the command of the Royal Navy...

 Sir James Graham. One source suggests John Biscoe

John Biscoe

John Biscoe was an English mariner and explorer who commanded the first expedition known to have sighted the areas named Enderby Land and Graham Land along the coast of Antarctica...

 had sighted Anvers Island

Anvers Island

Anvers Island or Antwerp Island or Antwerpen Island or Isla Amberes is a high, mountainous island long, which is the largest feature in the Palmer Archipelago, lying southwest of Brabant Island at the southwestern end of the group. Anvers Island is located at...

 rather than the Antarctic continent and another that the expedition made a landing there.

Before heading homeward, Biscoe again began charting the new coastline the expedition had found and by the end of April 1832 he had become the third man (after James Cook

James Cook

Captain James Cook, FRS, RN was a British explorer, navigator and cartographer who ultimately rose to the rank of captain in the Royal Navy...

 and Fabian von Bellingshausen

Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen

Fabian Gottlieb Thaddeus von Bellingshausen was an officer in the Imperial Russian Navy, cartographer and explorer, who ultimately rose to the rank of Admiral...

) to circumnavigate

Circumnavigation

Circumnavigation – literally, "navigation of a circumference" – refers to travelling all the way around an island, a continent, or the entire planet Earth.- Global circumnavigation :...

 the Antarctic continent. On the journey home, one calamity befell the expedition: in July, the Lively was wrecked at the Falkland Islands

Falkland Islands

The Falkland Islands are an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean, located about from the coast of mainland South America. The archipelago consists of East Falkland, West Falkland and 776 lesser islands. The capital, Stanley, is on East Falkland...

. The expedition nonetheless returned to London safely by the beginning of 1833.

As well as exploring the Antarctic coastline, the expedition had also tried in vain to rediscover the Aurora Islands

Aurora Islands

The Aurora Islands was a group of three phantom islands first reported in 1762 by the Spanish merchant ship Aurora while sailing from Lima to Cádiz. The Aurora's officers reported sighting them again in 1774. The Spanish ship San Miguel fixed their location at 52°37'S, 47°49'W...

 and Nimrod Islands

Nimrod Islands

The Nimrod Islands were a group of islands first reported in 1828 by Captain Eilbeck of the ship Nimrod while sailing from Port Jackson around Cape Horn...

. These were islands in the Southern Ocean that other mariners had claimed to have found, but eventually, during the twentieth century, there were declared to be phantom

Phantom island

Phantom islands are islands that were believed to exist, and appeared on maps for a period of time during recorded history, but were later removed after they were proved to be nonexistent...

.