Edward Bransfield 

A short film

By 1820 man had explored and mapped most of the planet. The continents were known. Europe. Africa. Asia. Australia.The Americas. The Arctic. Yes, there was still a lot of detail to be added but the big picture was understood.

With one exception - The Southern Ocean.

Two hundred years ago the great Southern Ocean was the last place on Earth you could go, without knowing where you were going.

It was uncharted and deadly dangerous. Few ventured.

The consensus held there was nothing further south of the Americas. The great explorer Captain James Cook said as much some decades earlier, "nothing but treacherous sea and menacing ice."

If you did go there and discover land, among the ice and the 50ftseas, it would mean unimaginable riches for your country (empire) and for you.

But most likely you would be sailing to your death.

Into this forbidding realm in the spring of 1820 sailed Edward Bransfield.

An Irishman.

A Cork man.

Brought to Americas by chance.

To make a great discovery.

To find the land they said didn't exist.

To find the last great continent.

To find Antarctica.

An heroic adventure, one which should have bleached them him history. Instead of obscurity.

This is his story.