January 17, 1773

Second voyage of James Cook

Cook's expedition crosses the Antarctic Circle

At noon the ship was only four and a half miles beyond the invisible line it had just made famous.

17 January 1773, about a quarter past eleven

At about 11:15 a.m. on 17 January 1773, HMS Resolution crossed south of the Antarctic Circle — the first recorded ship to do so. HMS Adventure, commanded by Tobias Furneaux, was in company.

Cook's observed noon position was 66°36′ south, four and a half miles beyond the circle. He recorded that no ship was known to have crossed it before.

Ice islands, whales and petrels

The ships met numerous ice islands and loose ice as they continued south, with whales moving among them and Antarctic petrels arriving in flights of twenty or thirty.

Some sailors worried that stored ice would expand and burst its casks as it melted. An experiment aboard demonstrated the opposite.

Turned north within hours

By that evening, or the next nautical journal period, an apparently continuous field of ice blocked the route south, unbroken from east-southeast to west-southwest. The ships turned north rather than risk being trapped.

Crossing the circle was not the same as reaching or seeing Antarctica; the expedition stayed at sea. This was the first of three crossings on the voyage, and not Cook's farthest south — he reached 71°10′ south on 30 January 1774.

Sources

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