Skip navigation

Please note that this site is an archive, and is not being updated.

You are in:  Home » News items » Magdalena Oldendorff - Antarctic Ship rescue

Location of the Magdalena Oldendorff
11 June - 20 July, and 29 July - December 2002

Please click on the image below for a full size map (179K)

This map was scanned from an original in the SPRI Library. It dates from 1963, and also shows geophysical traverses carried out during the South African National Antarctic Expedition, 1960-69.
The S African base SANAE was then on the ice shelf (tiny black triangle) but SANAE IV has now been built on a nunatak called Vesleskarvet at 71 40 S, 02 51 W. [Map scan edited]

On 21 January 1820, the Russian admiral Thaddeus von Bellingshausen [1778-1852] sighted an icefield from 69°25'S and 1°11'W "which seemed to be covered with small hillocks". Without knowing it, Bellingshausen had made the first sighting of the continent of Antarctica. His ships were the the Vostok and Mirnyi. Later the same year, Nathaniel Brown Palmer, and Edward Bransfield, also claimed to have seen the continent.