John Biscoe
English mariner and explorer (1794–1843)
John Biscoe (28 April 1794 – 1843) 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. The expedition also found a number of islands in the vicinity of Graham Land, including the Biscoe Islands that were named after him.
Early life
Biscoe was born in Enfield, Middlesex, England. In March 1812, aged seventeen, he joined the Royal Navy and served during the 1812–1815 war against the United States. By the time of his discharge in 1815, he had become a justice Master. Thereafter he sailed on board merchant shipping as a mate or master, mostly to the East or West Indies.
Southern Ocean expedition, 1830–1833
In 1830, the whaling company Samuel Enderby & Sons appointed Biscoe master of the brig Tula and leader of an expedition to find new sealing grounds in the Southern Ocean. Accompanied by the cutter Lively, the Tula left London and by December had reached the South Shetland Islands. The expedition then sailed further south, crossing the Antarctic Circle on 22 January 1831, before turning east at 60°S.
A month later, on 24 February 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 in honour of his patrons.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Biscoe” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.