288 DISCOVERY REPORTS 



having met with little success in the more rugged and inaccessible lands to the south 

 and south-west of the Bransfield Strait, began to push still farther eastward in search of 

 new hunting grounds. It was such a voyage to the eastward that led to the discovery of 

 the South Orkney Islands in December 1821. 



George Powell,^ who discovered and made the first chart of the South Orkneys, was 

 an English sealer who had made at least two voyages into the Antarctic. Of his ancestry 

 and early Hfe nothing appears to be known. He was born about 1795^ and went to sea 

 at an early age. In the summer of 1820-1 he was at the South Shetlands, being then in 

 the employment of one Bennett, in honour of whom he afterwards named a cape at the 

 South Orkneys. Of this voyage there is no record, but he obviously took his full share 

 in the general massacre which occurred then, for he returned to London in April 1821 

 with a rich cargo of fur sealskins in the cutter ' Eliza '. The following season he was again 

 at the South Shetlands with the ' Eliza ' and the sloop ' Dove ', in which on December 6, 

 1821 he discovered the South Orkneys.^ He returned to London on August 26, 1822. 

 In 1824 ^^ ^^^ '"^ the Pacific Ocean engaged in exploratory work and sperm whaling 

 in a ship called the 'Rambler', but on April 3 of that year, at Vavau in the Tonga 

 group, while endeavouring to retrieve certain members of his crew who had deserted, 

 he was suddenly set upon by natives and killed. The manner of his death, which is 

 described by Michaud as most horrible, recalls that of Captain Cook. He was only 

 twenty-nine years old and in Michaud 's words "son ardeur entreprenante et son in- 

 structions promettaient un marin distingue". 



For various reasons Powell's work in the south did not for a long time receive the full 

 recognition that would appear to be its due, except perhaps by the French.* His Notes 

 on South-Shetland, etc., pp. 3-12, which was printed to accompany his general chart 

 of that group (p. 289, footnote 3), is the only published work by Powell that exists.^ 

 It comprises a short editorial preface and extracts from the journal (no longer extant) 



' For certain of these biographical details the author is indebted to L. G. Michaud's account of Powell's 

 Hfe in Biographic Universelle, 1845, pp. 253-4 (P^^is), kindly communicated by the secretary of the French 

 Geographical Society, to whom acknowledgment is made. 



- He may have been a Londoner, for in the Prefatory Remarks, p. 3, to Notes on South- Shetland, etc., 

 the publisher makes acknowledgment for the extracts from Powell's journal to a Mr Lewthwaite, teacher of 

 navigation of Princes Street, Rotherhithe, with whom Powell had apparently left his private papers. 



3 For full details of the discovery see pp. 295 et seq. The statement in North and South Atlantic Memoir, 

 1844, Section vii, p. 225 (Blachford and Imray, London), that Powell, in 1821, discovered Trinity Land, 

 south of the South Shetlands and the South Orkneys, between 60° 30' and 61° S, and 44° 30' and 46° 30' W, 

 is quite meaningless: the South Orkneys themselves lie in this position. 



* Balch, E. S., 1901, in Antarctica: A history of Antarctic discovery, Journ. Franklin Inst., CLI, p. 321, has 

 the following footnote: " It is a singular fact that Powell appears to have received more recognition from the 

 French than from his own countrymen. An account of his life may be found in the Biographic Universelle, 

 Supplement, Paris, L. G. Michaud, 1845. .. .Jules de Blosseville, Lieutenant de Vaisseau, wrote a long 

 appreciative notice of Powell: Mort du Capitaine Georges Powell; Revue des Deux Mondes, in annee. 

 Tome I, Paris, 1831, pages 38-46." 



•' Michaud {loc. cit.) states that Powell also published Sailing Directiom for the Straits of Magellan, from 

 which it would appear that on one or other of his Antarctic voyages he had made surveys in and about the 

 Patagonian Channels. 



