The Voyage of Captain Bellingshausen to the Antarctic Seas, 1819-1821

In July 1819, two Russian sloops, the Vostok and the Mirny, leave Kronstadt on the orders of Alexander I: to push toward the South Pole as far as the ice allows.

At their head is Captain Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen, assisted by Lieutenant Mikhail Lazarev. He keeps the logbook with a navigator's precision and a curious observer's eye. Copenhagen, where the naturalists give up the voyage, Portsmouth and the hunt for instruments in London, Tenerife in the shadow of its peak, the calms of the equator, then Rio de Janeiro, its slave market, its waterfall and the audience with King John VI: the first half of the journey is still that of the known world.

Then the unknown begins. The two ships skirt South Georgia, discover the Marquis de Traversay Islands and their penguin colonies, and explore the South Sandwich Islands as far as the rocks of Thule. Then three times they push beyond the polar circle, into mist, sleet and frost, among the icebergs. On 16 January 1820, at 69° 25' south latitude, endless ice bars their way.

Snowstorms, fresh water cut from floating blocks, the aurora australis: this first volume leads the expedition to the day the two sloops part company, with a rendezvous fixed at Port Jackson. What lay hidden behind this white wall, the last continent?