AMERICAN SEALERS 
93 
whaling cruise in the South Atlantic, came upon Bouvet’s 
Cape Circumcision. Fog and ice, the usual companions 
of the mariner in those seas, did not allow them to land 
though Lindsay stayed in the neighbourhood for a week, 
but they fixed the position of the Cape as 54 0 15' S. and 
4° 15' E. But during the first decades of the nineteenth 
century the American interest in the seal-fisheries prob- 
ably outweighed the British. How keen it must have 
been is shown by the fact that Edmund Fanning was ap- 
pointed in 1812 commander of a United States expedi- 
tion, in the Volunteer and Hope, for a voyage of discov- 
ery to explore the southern hemisphere and circumnavi- 
gate the globe. The unfortunate war between Great 
Britain and the United States which broke out in that 
year made it impossible to proceed with the expedition. 
Though the smoke of war now involved the whole of 
Europe and North America, and the outlook for the fu- 
ture was black enough at home, the old Hanseatic 
motto held its force “ Necessare est navigare ” and 
year by year more and more ships sought the stormy 
neighbourhood of the Horn. After the final struggle of 
1815 when the disturber of the peace of Europe was him- 
self enisled in the solitudes of the South Atlantic the 
traders of the east and west sailed southward in in- 
creasing numbers. 
The first absolutely clear episode in the history of Ant- 
arctic discovery since Cook was due to a British seaman, 
William Smith, captain of the brig Williams, of Blyth, 
one of the north country craft so highly rated by Cook. 
Trading between Montevideo and Valparaiso he brought 
his ship round Cape Horn with a bold southward sweep in 
February, 1819, believing that by keeping far off the land 
he would find better weather for making what is always 
