SOVIET SCIENTISTS SAY CAPTAIN COOK DID NOT DISCOVER ANTARCTICA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27026, 10 March 1949, Page 7

SOVIET SCIENTISTS SAY CAPTAIN COOK DID NOT DISCOVER ANTARCTICA

New Zealand Press Association Special Correspondent Rec. 9.50 p.m. . LONDON, Mar. 9. Who discovered Antarctica? Why, Russia of course, not Captain James Cook. Russians, according to the Moscow Radio, discovered that Continent in January, 1820. The claim was made at a meeting of the scientific council of the Geography Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow. A similar claim was made by the Soviet Geographic Socie y two weeks ago. The Institute Director, Mr A. A. Grigoryev reiterated the society’s statement that all future decisions on the Antarctic taken without the Soviet’s participation were “illegal.”

Mr Grigoryev, flanked by leading Russian geography professors, told the institute that Captains Y. F. Bellingshausen and M. P. Lazarev proved that Britain’s famed Captain James Cook did not discover the Antarctic in 1776. , . Cook had said there were no land masses there, except near the South Pole, according to the Russian argument. But two Russian explorers who sailed from Kronstadt on July 4, 1819. came close to an enormous icefield where no one had been before them Thus, they were the first to discover the Antarctic, approaching it three times—twice in January, 1820, and again in January, 1821. “Oh July 24, 1821, the expedition returned to Kronstadt after a 751-day voyage, having circumnavigated Antarctica. This was an event unprecedented in the history of world science,” Mr Grigoryev said.

“The continent of Antarctica and the islands near it are the base for rich whaling enterprises where the Soviet whaling fleet is now working for the third year.” Mr Grigoryev concluded: The Russian navigators refuted the idea that the continent did not exist at all. They did so by discovering the Antarctic, and therefore the USSR has an indisputable right to take part in all decisions concerning it. “ Soviet geographers must raise their voice and declare that all decisions taken without the participation of the USSR are illegal.”

Chambers’s Encyclopaedia says that Cook was the first to undertake a systematic exploration of the Antarctic region, “sailing all round at a high latitude, and reaching 71 degrees 10 minutes south in 106 degrees 54 minutes west."