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The Englishman John Davis discovered the Falkland Islands in August 1592 during a tragic expedition. The crew were forced to kill some 14,000 penguins for food, which were stored as properly as possible, but once the ship reached the Tropics the penguin meat spoiled. Only 16 members of the original crew of 76 ever reached home shores.

The first men to cross the Antarctic Circle, in January 1773, were Englishman Captain James Cook and his crew. On his third voyage, in January 1775, he sailed past South Georgia and discovered the South Sandwich Islands two weeks later.

1820–1899

On 27 January 1820 the Russian Fabian von Bellinghausen became the first person to see the Antarctic continent. In that same year American Nathaniel Palmer, on the Hero, claimed to see the Antarctic Peninsula. Palmer was a member of a sealing fleet from New England. Only 19 years old, he was dispatched from the sealing grounds in the South Shetlands by his commanding officer to search for land to the south.

The next year von Bellinghausen returned to the Antarctic waters and discovered Peter I Island and the Alexander Islands. He completed a circumnavigation of Antarctica, being only the second explorer, after Cook, to do so.