Flag Coat of Arms Motto: Leo Terram Propriam Protegat(Latin: Let the lion protect its own land) Anthem: God Save the King
The history of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands is relatively recent. When European explorers discovered the islands, they were uninhabited, and their hostile climate, mountainous terrain, and remoteness made subsequent settlement difficult. Due to these conditions, human activity in the islands has largely consisted of sealing, whaling, and scientific surveys and research, interrupted by World War II and the Falklands War.
17th to 19th century
The South Atlantic island of South Georgia, situated south of the Antarctic Convergence, was the first Antarctic territory to be discovered. (A concise 1982 version of the book) It was first visited in 1675 by Antoine de la Roché, an English merchant born in London to a French father.L. Ivanov and N. Ivanova. Roché Island / South Georgia. In: The World of Antarctica. Generis Publishing, 2022. pp. 68–70. He left Hamburg in 1674 as a passenger on a 350-ton vessel bound for Peru. During the return journey, it was en route to Salvador in Brazil around Cape Horn. While trying to navigate through the Le Maire Strait near Staten Island, it was driven off course far to the east. In April 1675, the vessel found refuge in a bay of an unknown island where it anchored for 14 days. La Roché published a report of his voyage in London in 1678 in which he described the new land. That report is now lost but shortly afterwards, in 1690, Captain Francisco de Seixas y Lovera, a Spanish mariner, published an account of La Roché's discovery in his Descripcion geographica, y derrotero de la region austral Magallanica.Capt. Francisco de Seixas y Lovera, Descripcion geographica, y derrotero de la region austral Magallanica. Que se dirige al Rey nuestro señor, gran monarca de España, y sus dominios en Europa, Emperador del Nuevo Mundo Americano, y Rey de los reynos de la Filipinas y Malucas, Madrid, Antonio de Zafra, 1690. (Narrates the discovery of South Georgia by the Englishman Anthony de la Roché in April 1675 (Capítulo IIII Título XIX page 27 or page 99 of pdf); Relevant fragment.)Alexander Dalrymple. A Collection of Voyages Chiefly in The Southern Atlantick Ocean. London, 1775. pp.85-88. After this, cartographers started to depict "Roché Island" on their maps. Roché Island is almost certainly South Georgia, despite the discrepancies in the coordinates given, which can be accounted for by the navigational difficulties experienced by all sailors at the time.
Sir Edmund Halley in HMS Paramore (or Paramour) made a major scientific discovery in what is now the South Georgia EEZ in January 1700, discovering and describing the Antarctic Convergence.Alan Gurney. Below the Convergence: Voyages Toward Antarctica, 1699–1839. New York: Penguin Books, 1998.
In 1756, the island was sighted and named 'San Pedro' by the Spanish vessel León under Captain Gregorio Jerez sailing in the service of the French company Sieur Duclos of Saint-Malo, with the merchant and mariner Nicolas Pierre Duclos-Guyot on board.
These early visits resulted in no sovereignty claims. In particular―unlike the case of the Falkland Islands―Spain never claimed South Georgia. The latter anyway fell within the 'Portuguese' portion of the world as envisaged by the 1494 Tordesillas Treaty concluded between Spain and Portugal. Thus, forming the basis of a potential Brazilian claim to South Georgia (São Pedro) via Brazilian Antarctica.
The mariner Captain James Cook in accompanied by made the first landing, survey and mapping of South Georgia. As mandated by the Admiralty, on 17 January 1775 he took possession for Britain and renamed the island 'Isle of Georgia' for King George III. German naturalist Georg Forster, who accompanied Cook during their landings in three separate places at Possession Bay on that day, wrote: "Here Captain Cook displayed the British flag, and performed the ceremony of taking possession of those barren rocks, in the name of his Britannic Majesty, and his heirs forever. A volley of two or three muskets was fired into the air." Nowadays the date of 17 January is celebrated as Possession Day, a public holiday in SGSSI.Public Holidays 2013. Public Holidays 2014. South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands Gazette No. 2, 13 June 2013. p. 3.
The group of Shag Rocks and Black Rock forming the west extremity of the British overseas territory of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands is situated 270 km or 150 nmi west by north of the South Georgian mainland. Probably discovered in 1762 by the Spanish ship Aurora, these rocks appeared on early maps as Aurora Islands, were visited and renamed by the American sealer James Sheffield in the Hersilia in 1819, and mapped by HMS Dartmouth in 1920.
South Georgia's coast and waters have been surveyed by a number of expeditions since those of Cook and Bellingshausen. In particular, the extensive oceanographic investigations carried out by the Discovery Committee from 1925 to 1951 yielded an enormous amount of scientific results and data, including the discovery of the Antarctic Convergence. The first land-based scientific expedition on South Georgia was the 1882–83 German Polar Year expedition at Moltke Harbour, Royal Bay.
During the late 18th century and throughout the 19th century, South Georgia was inhabited by English and Yankee sealers, who used to live there for considerable periods of time and sometimes overwintered.R.K. Headland. Chronological List of Antarctic Expeditions and Related Historical Events. Cambridge University Press, 1989. 730 pp. The first fur seals from the island were taken in 1786 by the English sealing vessel Lord Hawkesbury, while the first commercial visit to the South Sandwich Islands was made in 1816 by another English ship, the Ann.
The sealers pursued their trade in a most unsustainable manner, promptly reducing the fur seal population to near extermination. As a result, sealing activities on South Georgia had three marked peaks in 1786–1802, 1814–23, and 1869–1913 respectively, decreasing in between and gradually shifting to elephant seals taken for oil. More efficient regulation and management were practised in the second sealing epoch, 1909–64.
During the 19th century, the effective, continuous and unchallenged British possession and government for South Georgia was provided for by the British Letters Patent of 1843, revised in 1876, 1892, 1908 and 1917, with the island appearing in the Colonial Office Yearbook since 1887. From 1881 on, Britain regulated the economic activities and conservation by administrative acts such as the Sealing Ordinances of 1881 and 1899. South Georgia was governed by the United Kingdom as a Falkland Islands Dependency, a distinct entity administered through the Falkland Islands but not part of them in political or financial respect. These constitutional arrangements stayed in place throughout the second half of the 19th century and most of the 20th century, until South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands were incorporated as a distinct British overseas territory in 1985.
20th century
In the early 20th century South Georgia experienced a new rush of economic activity and settlement. Following a 1900 advertisement by the Falklands Government the entire island was leased to a Punta Arenas company, and a subsequent conflict of interests with the Compañía Argentina de Pesca which had started whaling at Grytviken since December 1904 was settled by the British authorities with the company applying for and being granted British whaling lease.
South Georgia became the world's largest whaling centre, with shore bases at Grytviken (operating 1904–64), Leith Harbour (1909–65), Ocean Harbour (1909–20), Husvik (1910–60), Stromness (1912–61) and Prince Olav Harbour (1917–34). The companies involved included Compañía Argentina de Pesca, Christian Salvesen Ltd (UK), Albion Star (South Georgia) Ltd. (Falkland Islands), the Norwegian whaling companies Hvalfangerselskap Ocean, Tønsberg Hvalfangeri and Sandefjord Hvalfangerselskap, as well as the Southern Whaling and Sealing Company (South Africa). The Japanese companies Kokusai Gyogyo Kabushike Kaisha and Nippon Suisan Kaisha sub-leased respectively Grytviken in 1963–64 and Leith Harbour in 1963–65, the last seasons of South Georgia whaling.
The spread of Norwegian whaling industry to Antarctica in the early 20th century motivated Norway, right after its independence from Sweden in 1905, to pursue territorial expansion not only in the Arctic claiming Jan Mayen and Sverdrup Islands, but also in Antarctica. Norway claimed Bouvet Island and looked further south, formally inquiring of the British Foreign Office about the international status of the area between 45° and 65° south latitude and 35° and 80° west longitude. Following a second such diplomatic démarche by the Norwegian Government dated 4 March 1907, the United Kingdom replied that the areas were British based on discoveries made in the first half of the 19th century, and issued the 1908 Letters Patent incorporating the British Falkland Islands Dependencies with a permanent local administration in Grytviken established in 1909.Odd Gunnar Skagestad. Norsk Polar Politikk: Hovedtrekk og Utvikslingslinier, 1905–1974. Oslo: Dreyers Forlag, 1975Thorleif Tobias Thorleifsson. Bi-polar international diplomacy: The Sverdrup Islands question, 1902–1930. Master of Arts Thesis, Simon Fraser University, 2004.
Britain's 1908 Letters Patent established constitutional arrangements for its possessions in the South Atlantic, including the formal annexation of the South Sandwich Islands. The Letters Patent listed these possessions as "the groups of islands known as South Georgia, the South Orkneys, the South Shetlands, and the Sandwich Islands, and the territory known as Graham's Land, situated in the South Atlantic Ocean to the south of the 50th parallel of south latitude, and lying between the 20th and the 80th degrees of west longitude". In 1917 the Letters Patent were modified, applying the "sector principle" used in the Arctic; the new scope of the Falkland Islands Dependencies was extended to comprise "all islands and territories whatsoever between the 20th degree of west longitude and the 50th degree of west longitude which are situated south of the 50th parallel of south latitude; and all islands and territories whatsoever between the 50th degree of west longitude and the 80th degree of west longitude which are situated south of the 58th parallel of south latitude", thus reaching the South Pole. The 1908 Letters Patent were not disputed by Argentina at the time, but in 1948 Argentina conceived an argument that they were invalid on the grounds that they allegedly encompassed parts of the South American mainland as well as the Falklands, making the latter dependencies of themselves.National Interests and Claims in the Antarctic , p. 19, Robert E. WilsonR.K. Headland, The Island of South Georgia, Cambridge University Press, 1984.The Ross Dependency. The Geographical Journal, Vol. 62, No. 5 (Nov. 1923), pp. 362–365.
All whaling stations on South Georgia operated under whaling leases applied for by each company and granted by the Governor of the Falkland Islands and Dependencies. On behalf of the Compañía Argentina de Pesca, the application was filed with the British Legation in Buenos Aires by the company's president Pedro Christophersen and Captain Guillermo Nuñez, a technical advisor and shareholder in the company who was also Director of Armaments of the Argentine Navy.
From 1906 on the Argentine company was operating in compliance with its whaling and sealing leases granted by the Falklands Governor. That continued until Grytviken was sold to Albion Star (South Georgia) Ltd. in 1960, closed in 1964, and eventually purchased by Christian Salvesen Ltd.