History of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands

There is a widespread opinion that South Georgia was supposedly discovered by the famous Florentine traveler Amerigo Vespucci in 1502 in one of his voyages. Others believe that the island was discovered by the English buccaneer William Cowley in December 1683 . Document analysis, however, refutes these assumptions.

In April 1675 , rounding Cape Horn on its way from Chile to Brazil , the ship of London merchant Anthony de la Roche fell into a storm at the southern entrance to the Le Mer Strait and was abandoned far to the east, where he found refuge in one of the bays of the island two weeks. On the maps began to denote the island of Rocher in honor of the discoverer. The second time they saw the island in 1756 from a passing Spanish vessel “Leon” and gave it a new name: San Pedro .

These first visits did not lead to any territorial claims. In particular, Spain has never claimed the island, which, moreover, ended up in the "Portuguese" half of the world according to the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas between Spain and Portugal .

The great English navigator James Cook on the Resolutions and Adventure ships was the first to step ashore, surveyed and mapped the island, which he renamed to George Island, named after King George III of England . Performing the instructions of the Admiralty, on January 17, 1775, Cook declared the island ownership of the British crown .

Captain Cook also discovered the Clerk’s cliffs and the archipelago of the South Sandwich Islands . Three of the islands of the archipelago ( Zavadovsky , Leskov and Vysokiy ) were discovered in 1819 by the Russian Antarctic expedition Thaddeus Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev on the Vostok and Mirny ships, which had previously explored the south-west coast of South Georgia and Annenkov Island. Rocks Shag was discovered by the Spanish ship Aurora in 1762 .

In the last decades of the 18th century and throughout the entire 19th century, South Georgia was inhabited by English and North American sealers , who stayed for a long time and sometimes wintered on the island. Effective ownership, as well as continuous and undisputed British administration, was legalized by the Patent Letter of 1843 , supplemented in 1876 , 1892 and 1908 . Hunting and preservation of livestock seals were regulated by administrative acts of 1881 and 1899 . The island has been included in the Yearbook of the Ministry of Colonies since 1887 .

South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands became one of the Dependent territories of the Falkland Islands . Administratively, they were ruled by the Falkland authorities, but were not part of them in the political sense. The South Sandwich Islands were formally annexed by a 1908 patent letter. In 1985, the overseas territory of Great Britain South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands was formed .

In the 20th century, South Georgia became the largest whaling center in the world; the coastal bases of Grytviken (operating period 1904–64 ), Lit Harbor ( 1909–65 ), Ocean Harbor (1909–20), Husvik (1910–60), Stromnes (1912–61) and Prince Olav-Harbor were founded ( 1917 - 34 ). All whaling bases and companies on the island ( Norwegian , British , Argentine , South African and Japanese ) worked on the basis of licenses issued by the governor of the Falkland Islands and dependent territories . In particular, the requirement of the Argentine Fish Company was filed through the British Embassy in Buenos Aires and satisfied in 1905 .

Karl Anton Larsen , founder of Grytviken , was a naturalized British of Norwegian descent. His request for British citizenship was handed to the British Magistrate of South Georgia and approved in 1910 . As a manager of the Argentine Fish Company, Larsen organized the construction of Grytviken - a bold undertaking carried out by sixty Norwegians in just a month: from their arrival on the island on November 16 until the launch of the whale oil plant on December 24, 1904 . Larsen chose the whaling base during his last visit in 1902 , when the Swedish Antarctic Expedition Otto Nordenskiöld surveyed part of the island and gave the small bay the name “Grytviken” (“Boiler Bay”) because of the many items left by the hunters, including the boilers for firebox seal fat. One of these cauldrons with the inscription "Johnson and Sons, Wapping Dock London" is still preserved in the Museum of South Georgia in Grytvikene.

Among whalers dominated immigrants from Norway . During the whaling era, which lasted until 1965 , the population ranged from about 1,000 in the summer (in some years over 2000) to about 200 in the winter. The first census was conducted by a British magistrate, James Wilson, on December 31, 1909 . 720 people were registered, including three women and one child, including 579 Norwegians , 58 Swedes , 32 Britons , 16 Danes , 15 Finns , 9 Germans , 7 Russians , 2 Dutch , 1 French and 1 Austrian .

Superintendents and other senior officers of the whaling bases often lived with their families. Among them was Fridtjof Jacobsen with his wife Clara Olette Jacobsen, whose daughter Solveig Gunbjerg Jacobsen is considered to be the first person born in the Antarctic - on October 8, 1913 in Grytvikene. On the island there are also more than 200 graves, the oldest - in 1820 . Among them is the tomb of 1922, Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton , who in 1916 crossed the Skosh Sea on the seven-meter boat "James Caird" in one of the most daring small vessels in the history of navigation, reached South Georgia and managed to organize the rescue of his expedition, which suffered disaster on the South Shetland Islands .

Meteorological observations in Grytvikene were started by Larsen in 1905 , and since 1907 they were conducted by the Argentine Fish Company in collaboration with the Argentine Meteorological Bureau in fulfillment of the requirements of the British license before its change in 1949 .

Since November 1909, a British magistrate has been permanently residing in South Georgia, carrying out local administrative control of the territory. His position was established by the Patent Letter of 1908 , the receipt of which the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs formally confirmed on March 18, 1909 without protest. In the years that followed, Argentine military and commercial ships, as well as Argentine citizens, visited the island while observing the usual port, customs and immigration formalities carried out by local British authorities. The first official claims to South Georgia were made by Argentina in 1927 , and to the South Sandwich Islands in 1938 . Since then, Argentina has supported its claims to South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, but has repeatedly (in 1947 , 1951 , 1953 , 1954 and 1955 ) refused to file these claims for resolution in the International Court of Justice or independent arbitration .

On November 7, 1976, on the island of Tula , one of the South Sandwich Islands, the Argentinean naval base Corbetta-Uruguay was secretly equipped. The United Kingdom protested this action in January 1977 , and subsequently repatriated Argentine personnel in 1982 .

During the Falkland conflict, Argentine forces occupied Grytviken and Lit Harbor on April 3, 1982, after a two-hour battle, during which the Argentine corvette Guerrico was damaged and an Argentine helicopter was shot down. After these losses, Argentina was unable to occupy the rest of the island and the Baird Island base, which, like the field camps in the Schlieper and St. Andrews bays and on the Lyell Glacier, remained under British control. After the fleet of Great Britain knocked out and captured the Argentine submarine " Santa Fe " from South Georgia on April 25, 1982 , the Argentine garrison capitulated.

After the Falkland conflict, Britain maintained a small garrison in Grytviken until March 2001 , after which the island returned to civilian control.

Because of its remoteness in the ocean and the harsh climate, South Georgia has never had an indigenous population ; to this day, permanent families for more than one generation do not live on this territory. Current settlements include Grytviken , King Edward Point, Baird Island and Huswick. King Edward Point , often regarded as part of the neighboring Grytviken, is the port of entry and residence of British port, customs, immigration, fishing, and postal authorities and administration. Since 1995, with the permission of Great Britain , the South African Meteorological Bureau has maintained two automatic weather stations on the islands of Zavadovsky and Thule in the uninhabited and volcanically active archipelago of the South Sandwich Islands.

• Antarctic Philately

• South Georgia official website
• Antarctic station King Edward Point
• Antarctic Baird Station
• Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources

Vintage cards

• 17th century map depicting Roche Island (South Georgia)
• 18th century map depicting Roche Island (South Georgia)
• James Cook, Chart of the Discovery of the South Atlantic Ocean in the South Atlantic Ocean, United Kingdom, W. Strahan and T. Cadel, London, 1777.

• Capt. Francisco de Seixas y Lovera, Descripcion geographica, y derrotero de la region austral Magallanica. Reina de Europa, Euordor del Nuevo Mundo de American, Rey de los Reynos de la Filipinas y Malucas, Madrid, Antonio de Zafra, 1690. ( Report on the discovery of South Georgia Englishman Anthony de la Roche in April 1675 )
• George Forster. Britannic Majesty's Sloop Resolution Commanded by Capt. James Cook, during the Years 1772, 3, 4 and 5 (2 vols.). London, 1777.
• Otto Nordenskjold, Johan G. Andersson, Carl A. Larsen. Antarctica or Two Years of the South Pole. London: Hurst & Blackett, 1905.
• South Georgia, Topographic map, 1: 200000, DOS 610 Series, Directorate of Overseas Surveys, Tolworth, UK, 1958.
• Robert K. Headland. The Island of South Georgia. Cambridge University Press, 1984.
• Historia de las Relaciones Exteriores Argentinas, Obra dirigida por Carlos Escude y Andres Cisneros, Desarrollada y publicada bajo los auspicios del Consejo Argentino para las Relaciones Internacionales (CARI) GEL / Nuevohacer (Buenos Aires), 2000