The Ice Islands, seen the 9th of Jan.ry 1773.

Famous engraved view of Cook’s ship and his men breaking ice in Antarctica with their picks on the 9th January, 1773.

Cook had left Cape Town on 22 November 1772 and headed for the area of the South Atlantic where the French navigator Bouvet claimed to have spotted land that he named Cape Circumcision. Shortly after leaving they experienced severe cold weather and early on 23 November 1772 the crew were issued with fearnaught jackets and trousers at the expense of the government. By early December they were sailing in thick fog and seeing ‘ice islands’. Cook had not found the island that Bouvet claimed to be in latitude 54°. Pack ice soon surrounded the ships but in the second week in January, in the southern mid-summer, the weather abated and Cook was able to take the ships southwards through the ice.

Cook records his men getting ice, ‘we hoisted out three Boats and took up  as much as yielded about 15 Tons of Fresh Water, the Adventure at the same time got about 8 or 9 and all this was done in 5 or 6 hours time; the pieces we took up  and which broke from the Main Island, were very hard and solid, some of them too large to be handled so that we were obliged to break them with our Ice Axes before they could be taken into the Boats’ ,|Cook, Journals II, 74.

Cook to reached the Antarctic Circle on 17 January. The next day, being severely impeded by the ice, they changed course and headed away to the north-east, after having reached 67°15’s.

References; Beddie 1381-33, Joppien 2.6A, ill.p.138, ill. pl.15, p.18

From Cook’s, A Voyage Towards the South Pole, and Round the World, performed in His Majesty’s Ships the ‘Resolution’ and ‘Adventure.’ In the Years 1772, 1773, 1774, and 1775.