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The Bellingshausen-Palmer meeting

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2015

Rip Bulkeley
Rip Bulkeley*
Affiliation:
38 Lonsdale Road, Oxford, OX2 7EW ([email protected])
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Abstract

The celebrated meeting between Captain Bellingshausen of the Imperial Russian Navy and the American sealing skipper Nathaniel Brown Palmer, off the South Shetland Islands in February 1821, has often been described by following just one or other of the two men's divergent and in some respects irreconcilable accounts. The most contentious issue is whether or not Palmer told Bellingshausen about the existence of a body of land to the south of the South Shetlands, known today as the Antarctic Peninsula. This note attempts to reach a balanced assessment of the matter by examining evidence from both sides, including several previously unconsidered items. It concludes that, although the truth will never be known with absolute certainty, the basic American account is more plausible, by the narrowest of narrow margins, than the Russian.

Type
Research Article
Information
Polar Record , Volume 51 , Issue 6 , November 2015 , pp. 644 - 654
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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